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Clearing Soup

A clear soup made with beef, veal, and vegetables simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Clearing Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. In a stock pot, combine 3 lbs beef (with ¼ lb bone), 1 lb veal (with bone), and 4 quarts cold water.

  2. Heat slowly until scum and bubbles form, skimming repeatedly.

  3. Add diced carrots, turnips, celery, onions, and leeks.

  4. Simmer uncovered for 5 hours, then strain through a hair sieve.

Clarify the soup

  1. In a stewpan, combine the chopped beef and stock with some of the same vegetables used to flavor the stock.

  2. Stir with a wooden spoon until the stock comes to a boil. Reduce heat and let it simmer for about 30 minutes without boiling.

  3. Strain the mixture twice through a fine cloth.

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. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 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
Its proteins bind with impurities and rise to form a raft that clarifies the soup.
Beef and veal bones
Release collagen and minerals during long simmering, giving the stock body and depth.
Stock
Provides the liquid base that carries the beef and flavors into the clarification.
Carrots, turnips, celery, onions, and leeks
Add aromatic sweetness and savory depth to the broth as they simmer.

The step that matters

Heat slowly until scum and bubbles form. Heating gently lets impurities coagulate and rise to the surface so they can be skimmed off. Boiling vigorously would break the scum apart and emulsify it into the broth, making it cloudy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, veal, carrot, turnip, celery, leek):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Lettucefits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, veal, carrot, turnip, celery, leek. 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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