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Cheap Soup

A hearty soup made with lean beef, peas, potatoes, rice, and water, seasoned with salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 851 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Cheap Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a large pot, combine the beef and water.

  2. Add the peas, potatoes, rice, and salt.

Cook and finish

  1. Boil gently until the mixture is reduced to 4 pints.

  2. For added flavor, stir in fried cabbage or puree the soup and serve with fried bread.

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. Potato + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together851 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  2. Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Peas + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,016 recipes

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

  4. Peas + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,434 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Beef + ricetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,265 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean beef
Provides the main savory meat flavor and substance of the soup.
Whole or split peas
Thicken the soup as they soften, giving it body and a hearty texture.
Potatoes
Break down slightly as they cook, adding starch that helps thicken the broth.
Rice
Absorbs liquid and softens during simmering, adding body to the soup.

The step that matters

Boil gently until reduced to 4 pints. A gentle simmer lets the beef, peas and potatoes become tender without toughening the meat or breaking the potatoes apart. A hard boil evaporates liquid unevenly and can make the soup cloudy and the meat stringy.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, potato, rice):

  1. Peanutfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Sesamefits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, potato, rice. 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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