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Brown Soup

A hearty beef soup made with browned steaks, vegetables, and seasonings.

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.

  2. Place the beef in a pot with water, bacon, onions, carrot, turnips, and herbs.

  3. Boil on moderate heat until reduced and flavorful.

Fry the steaks

  1. Cut the remaining beef into small steaks.

  2. Season the steaks with spices.

  3. Dredge the steaks in flour.

  4. Melt butter in a frying pan until dark brown.

  5. Fry the steaks until crisp on both sides.

  6. Drain the steaks and add them to the soup.

Finish the soup

  1. Add more spices and salt to the soup.

  2. Boil the soup for 45 minutes.

  3. Strain the soup and remove 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 meaty flavor and rich body to the broth.
Flour
Coats the steaks so they brown and crisp when fried.
Butter
Fries the steaks and adds browned, nutty flavor.
Onions
Add sweetness and aromatic depth to the broth.
Bacon ham
Adds salty, smoky fat that enriches the broth.

The step that matters

Fry the steaks until crisp on both sides. Flour-dredged steaks need enough hot fat and time to brown properly; too little heat leaves them pale, soggy, and less flavorful, while over-browning can turn them bitter.

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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