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Leg of Beef, or Shin of Beef Soup

A hearty beef soup made with leg or shin, turnips, carrots, onions, celery, parsley, thyme, savory, allspice, and black pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Leg of Beef, or Shin of Beef Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place the beef in a large saucepan with the cold water.

  2. Heat over a low flame and skim off any scum as it comes to a boil.

  3. Once the scum is removed, add the turnips, carrots, onions, celery, parsley, thyme, savory, allspice, and black pepper.

  4. Cover the saucepan tightly and let it simmer slowly for 4 hours or until the meat is tender.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef leg or shin
Provides the main protein; long, slow simmering breaks down its connective tissue into tender meat and rich body.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and earthy flavour as they soften in the broth.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and colour to the broth while softening into the soup.
Onions
Build savoury depth in the broth as they cook down.
Celery
Adds aromatic, savoury flavour to the broth.

The step that matters

Skimming the scum as it comes to a boil. Scum is coagulated protein and impurities released from the meat. Removing it early keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting, which is hard to fix once the vegetables and spices are in and the soup has simmered.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, turnip, carrot, celery, parsley, lemon, thyme):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, turnip, carrot, celery, parsley, lemon, thyme. 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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