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A Brown Beef Soup

A brown beef soup made with beef, water, cloves, pepper, salt, carrots, turnip, onions, celery, toasted bread, soy sauce, flour, and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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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 ↓

A Brown Beef Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Place the beef in a pot with water, cloves, pepper, and salt.

  2. Boil for 3 hours.

  3. Add diced carrots, turnip, chopped onions, chopped celery, and toasted bread to the pot.

  4. Boil for an additional 2 hours.

  5. Remove the meat.

  6. If not browned enough, add soy sauce.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Dice 2 carrots, 1 turnip, and 2 onions.

  2. Place them with the meat in a saucepan.

  3. Add pepper, salt, a little clove, and just enough water to cover the meat.

  4. Stew gently for 2 to 3 hours.

  5. Remove the meat.

  6. Mix flour with water and 2 teaspoons of mixed mustard.

  7. Stir into the gravy and bring to a boil.

  8. Pour the gravy and vegetables over the meat.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

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.

  1. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Round of beef
Provides the main meat, which releases flavour and body into the broth as it simmers.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Toasted bread
Adds body and a toasted flavour to the broth as it breaks down.
Soy sauce
Deepens the colour and adds savoury, browned flavour to the broth.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour mixture into the gravy. Flour mixed with water must be stirred in smoothly and brought to a boil so its starch swells and thickens evenly; adding it lumpy or undissolved leaves clumps and a thin, uneven gravy.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, carrot, turnip, onion, celery, bread):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, carrot, turnip, onion, celery, bread. 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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