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Shin or Leg of Beef Soup or Ragout

A hearty beef soup made with shin or leg, vegetables, herbs, and thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley 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 ↓

Shin or Leg of Beef Soup or Ragout

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Saw the bone into 3 or 4 pieces.

  2. Remove or stop the marrow with paste.

  3. Cover the beef with cold water and skim it clean.

Make the soup

  1. Add onions, carrots, turnips, celery, sweet herbs, and spices.

  2. Let the mixture stew gently for 3.5 to 4 hours.

  3. Boil the button onions until tender. Drain the button onions.

  4. Add the carrots and turnips to the pot 15 minutes before the soup is done.

  5. When the meat is tender, remove it.

  6. Strain the soup.

Thicken and serve

  1. Mix ½ cup of flour with a little butter or fat from the soup until smooth. Stir the flour mixture into the soup until it boils and is smooth.

  2. Strain the soup if necessary. Return the soup to the pot to warm the vegetables.

  3. Serve the meat whole or cut into pieces, seasoned with salt, pepper, port wine, and mushroom ketchup.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef shin or leg with bone
Long stewing releases gelatin and flavor from the bone and connective tissue, enriching the broth.
Flour
Starch mixed with fat and stirred into the boiling soup thickens it smoothly.
Carrots
Sweetness and body as they soften during the long stew, flavoring the broth.
Onions
Build savory depth and sweetness as they cook slowly into the broth.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and soft texture to the finished soup.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savory, umami flavor to the seasoned meat and soup.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour mixture into the soup. Flour clumps if added dry or unblended. Mixing it first with fat coats the grains so they disperse, and stirring while the soup boils lets the starch swell evenly into a smooth thickening.

Swap the onion

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

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

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