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Meat Soups

A hearty soup made with bacon, beef, onions, herbs, cloves, carrots, pepper, sea salt, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Meat Soups

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Use a quantity of bacon about a fourth of the beef.

  2. Cover tightly.

  3. Extract the gravy, allowing it to re-enter the meat.

Make the soup

  1. Add boiling water according to the desired soup quantity.

  2. Include two or three small onions, chopped sweet herbs, and a few cloves.

  3. Stew slowly for four to five hours until the meat is tender.

  4. For a richer soup, add thinly sliced carrots, herbs, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  5. Continue to stew until the soup reaches a rich consistency.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the main meat flavour and, after slow stewing, becomes tender.
Bacon
Adds smoky, salty fat that flavours the gravy and the soup.
Onions
Add sweetness and savoury depth as they soften during stewing.

The step that matters

Stew slowly for four to five hours until the meat is tender. Low, slow heat breaks down the tough connective tissue in the meat, so it becomes tender instead of stringy. Rushing with high heat toughens the meat and leaves the soup thin.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Clovethe original

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