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Beef Sour

A beef broth with browned meat, vegetables, and spices, served as a soup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Beef Sour

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Cut the lean beef off the shank.

  2. Heat a little beef suet in a kettle.

  3. Fry the beef until browned.

  4. Add the bones.

  5. Cover with cold water.

  6. Cover the kettle.

  7. Cook slowly until the meat falls off the bones.

  8. Strain the broth through a colander.

  9. Let the strained broth sit overnight to remove fat.

Make the soup

  1. Fry a sliced carrot, onion, and small turnip until browned.

  2. Add sugar, mace, cloves, allspice, and celery seed to the vegetables.

  3. Cook the mixture slowly in the broth for one hour.

  4. Strain the soup again.

  5. Cook vermicelli or pearl barley in water until tender.

  6. Add the cooked vermicelli or pearl barley to the soup.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Carrot + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,021 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean beef from the shank
Browned and then simmered until tender, giving the broth its meaty flavor.
Beef suet
Fat used to brown the beef, adding richness and browned flavor.
Onion
Frying it until browned adds savory, sweet depth to the soup.
Carrot
Fried and simmered in the broth, adding sweetness and body.
Small turnip
Fried with the other vegetables, adding mild sweetness and earthy flavor.
Celery seed
Adds a warm, aromatic savory note to the broth.

The step that matters

Letting the strained broth sit overnight. Fat rises and solidifies as the broth cools, so chilling it overnight lets you lift the fat off cleanly before the soup is finished.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, onion, turnip, sugar, clove, allspice):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, onion, turnip, sugar, clove, allspice. 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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