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Portable Soup

A beef soup made by simmering various cuts, then cooling, skimming fat, reheating, and setting into small pots to preserve.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Portable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place the beef, shin of beef, cow-heel, and veal knuckles in a stewpan.

  2. Add enough water to barely cover the meat.

  3. Add the onions and seasoning.

  4. Stew the meat until it falls apart.

  5. Strain the mixture.

  6. Cool the strained soup in the coldest place available.

  7. Remove the fat from the top of the soup.

Reduce the soup

  1. Boil the soup in a stewpan without a lid over high heat for 8 hours, stirring frequently.

  2. Pour the soup into a pan.

  3. Let it stand for 24 hours.

  4. Transfer the soup into a large bowl.

  5. Boil water around the bowl to prevent bubbles.

  6. Boil until the soup reaches a good consistency.

Set and store

  1. Pour the finished soup into small jelly pots or saucers to cool and form cakes.

  2. Store in tin canisters in a dry, cool place.

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

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

  2. Beef + vealtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  3. Veal + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,841 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Gives the soup its meaty flavour as it stews slowly into a rich stock.
Cow-heel
Its bones and connective tissue release gelatine, giving the set soup body.
Veal knuckles
Bones and connective tissue release gelatine, helping the soup set firm when cooled.
Onions
Add sweetness and aromatic depth to the stock as they cook down.

The step that matters

Boil until the soup reaches a good consistency. Long boiling uncovered reduces the stock and concentrates its gelatine and flavour. Boiling too far can scorch the soup or leave it too stiff, so check it as it thickens.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Onionthe original
  2. Tomatofits about as well
  3. Carrotfits less well
  4. Potatofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, veal. 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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