Skip to main content
Main

Family Soup

A hearty beef and vegetable soup simmered for hours with herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 the beef

  1. Wash the beef pieces well and place them in a large pot.

  2. Add water and salt to the pot, using about 1 quart of water for each pound of beef.

  3. Bring to a hard boil, skimming off any scum that rises.

Simmer the soup

  1. Reduce heat and simmer steadily for 8 hours.

  2. After 3 hours, add celery, carrots, onions, and cabbage or substitute vegetables.

  3. Add the bunch of herbs tied in muslin.

  4. Remove the best part of the meat 2 hours before serving.

Serve

  1. Strain the soup before serving.

  2. For leftovers, simmer the next day for 1 hour to enhance flavor.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Cabbage + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Long simmering breaks down connective tissue, giving the broth body and tender meat.
Celery
Adds aromatic flavor and a savory vegetable base to the broth.
Carrots
Release natural sugars during long cooking, adding sweetness that balances the savory broth.
Cabbage
Adds mild sweetness and bulk, softening as it cooks in the broth.

The step that matters

Skimming at the boil. Scum that rises at the start contains coagulated proteins and impurities. Skimming it early keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

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

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipes