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Shin or Leg of Beef Soup or Ragout

A hearty beef soup made with shin or leg, vegetables, and thickened with flour and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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 ↓

Shin or Leg of Beef Soup or Ragout

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Cut the beef into 3 or 4 pieces and remove or stop the marrow with paste.

  2. Cover the beef with cold water and skim the surface clean.

  3. Add onions, carrots, celery, sweet herbs, and spices.

  4. Let the mixture stew gently for 3.5 to 4 hours.

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Cut the red part of the carrots and turnips, and peel the button onions.

  2. Boil the button onions until tender, then drain them.

  3. Add the carrots and turnips to the pot 15 minutes before the beef is done.

Thicken and serve

  1. When the beef is tender, remove it and strain the soup.

  2. Thicken the soup with flour mixed with butter or fat from the soup.

  3. Stir until it boils and is smooth; strain if necessary.

  4. Return the soup to warm the vegetables.

  5. Serve the meat whole or cut into pieces, seasoned with pepper, salt, port wine, and mushroom ketchup.

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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  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

Shin or leg of beef
Slow stewing breaks down connective tissue, making the meat tender and enriching the broth.
Flour
Starch thickens the strained soup into a smooth, lightly body-rich sauce.
Butter or fat from the soup
Fat blended with flour coats the starch so it thickens smoothly without lumps.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the finished sauce.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savoury, umami flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening the soup with flour and fat. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps; mixing it with fat first coats the starch granules so they disperse. The mixture must then boil to fully activate the starch and reach a smooth, thickened sauce.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Okrafits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, celery, flour, butter, pepper. 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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