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Family Soup

A hearty beef soup with celery, carrots, onions, and optional cabbage, simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Family Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the beef into 3 pieces and wash it well.

  2. In a large pot, combine the beef and water, then add the salt.

Cook the soup

  1. Bring to a hard boil over a good fire for 8 hours before serving.

  2. Skim off the scum that rises after boiling.

  3. Reduce heat and simmer steadily.

  4. After 3 hours, add the celery, carrots, and fried onions.

  5. Add cabbage if desired.

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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Celery + cabbagetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,840 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Carrot + oniontop 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. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef shin or leg
Provides rich meaty flavor, and its connective tissue breaks down into gelatin that gives the broth body.
Celery
Adds aromatic, savory flavor that builds the background of the broth.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and color to the broth and vegetables.
Onions
Add savory aroma and depth once fried, rounding out the broth's flavor.

The step that matters

Simmer steadily after the initial boil. A vigorous boil churns fat and particles into the liquid, clouding the broth and toughening the meat. A gentle simmer keeps it clearer and lets the collagen in the shin break down slowly into gelatin for body.

Swap the cabbage

The recipe marks cabbage as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, celery, carrot, onion):

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, celery, carrot, onion. 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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