Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓
Beef Soup
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the beef
Crack the bone of the beef.
Extract the marrow and add it to the soup.
Combine the beef, bones, and water in a pot.
Heat the mixture gradually.
Let it boil slowly for at least 6 hours.
Replenish with boiling water if necessary.
After 7 hours, remove the meat.
Cover the soup until the next morning.
Finish the soup
An hour before serving, remove the fat from the surface.
Heat the soup.
Add salt to bring up the scum.
Skim the scum off carefully.
Slice the vegetables small.
Stew the sliced vegetables in just enough water until they break apart.
Cook the cabbage separately in water.
Discard the first water used for the cabbage.
Cook one whole carrot until done.
Set the cooked carrot aside to cool.
Add the remaining vegetables and their cooking water to the soup.
Return the pot to the fire.
Boil slowly for 30 minutes.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
The flavor team
The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.
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Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together10,173 recipes
Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
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Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together8,002 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Turnip + cabbagetop 2% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together897 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,418 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Celery + tomatotop 4% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,377 recipes
Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Beef
- Provides rich flavor and body to the broth as it simmers for hours.
- Beef bones
- Release marrow and gelatin, adding body and depth to the broth.
- Water
- Forms the broth base and extracts flavor from the meat and bones.
- Turnips
- Soften during stewing and add mild sweetness and body to the soup.
- Carrots
- Add natural sweetness and color to the broth.
- Tomatoes
- Contribute acidity and savory depth to the soup.
The step that matters
Skimming the scum. Scum rises as proteins coagulate in the simmering broth; removing it carefully keeps the soup clear and clean-tasting, while leaving it in makes the broth cloudy and gives it a muddy flavor.
Swap the cabbage
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, turnip, corn, celery, tomato):
- Parsnipfits better
- Capsicumfits better
- Okrafits better
- Cabbagethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, corn, celery, tomato. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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