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Beef Soup

A hearty soup made with beef bone, beans, corn, potatoes, tomatoes, carrots, turnips, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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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 ↓

Beef Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Place the soup bone in a pot and cover with water.

  2. Simmer for several hours, until about 10 o'clock.

  3. Add the butter beans, corn, potatoes, tomatoes, carrots, and turnips.

  4. Boil until ready to serve.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the soup.

  2. If not thick enough, mix flour with cold water and add to the soup.

  3. Season with salt, pepper, ginger, allspice, cloves, and mace.

  4. Bring to a boil again and serve.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Beans + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

  3. Beans + corntop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,211 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Beans + turniptop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together400 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Soup bone
Releases flavor and gelatin into the water as it simmers, giving the broth body and taste.
Butter beans
Add starch and body, becoming tender and thickening the soup as they cook.
Potatoes
Release starch as they cook, helping thicken the broth and giving it a soft, hearty texture.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and liquid, contributing sweetness and a rich color to the soup.
Flour
Thickens the liquid when mixed with cold water and stirred in, adding body.

The step that matters

Adding the flour slurry. Flour must be mixed with cold water first so it disperses without lumps. Added dry or hot, it clumps, and the starch only thickens properly once the soup is brought back to a boil.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, beans, corn, potato, carrot, turnip, flour):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, beans, corn, potato, carrot, turnip, flour. 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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