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Brown Soup

A hearty beef soup with brown sauce, seasoned with spices and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Brown Soup

Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Brown Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Score the beef to draw out the juice and place it in a pot with water, bacon, onions, carrot, turnips, and sweet herbs.

  2. Boil for 3 hours on moderate heat until reduced and flavorful.

Brown the steaks

  1. Season the small beef steaks with mixed spices and dredge in flour.

  2. Melt butter in a frying pan and heat until dark brown.

  3. Add the steaks and cook until browned and crisp on both sides.

  4. Remove the steaks, drain from butter, and add to the soup with more mixed spices and salt.

Finish the soup

  1. Boil the soup for an additional 45 minutes, then strain through a sieve and skim off the fat.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the main savory flavor and body as it simmers into the broth.
Flour
Coats the steaks so they brown and crisp in the butter.
Butter
Fat that browns the dredged steaks and adds rich flavor.
Turnips
Soften during long simmering and add mild sweetness to the broth.
Onions
Release sugars and aromatic compounds that deepen the broth's flavor.

The step that matters

Browning the floured steaks in butter. Butter must be heated until dark brown, and the steaks must be cooked until browned. Pale searing leaves little flavor, while the Maillard reaction between flour, sugars and proteins builds deep savory color and taste.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, ham, onion, turnip, flour, butter):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, ham, onion, turnip, flour, butter. 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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