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Meat Soups

A simple soup made by simmering meat with carrots, turnips, onions, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Meat Soups

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Bring the meat to a boil and let it simmer gently until cooked.

  2. Add carrots, turnips, onions, and cloves to the pot.

  3. Once the meat is done, strain the broth through a fine cloth or sieve to make it clear.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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

Meat
Releases flavor and gelatin into the broth as it simmers slowly.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the broth as they soften during cooking.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and earthy flavor as they cook into the broth.
Onions
Contribute savory depth and aroma to the broth as they cook.

The step that matters

Keeping the simmer gentle. A rolling boil makes proteins and fat emulsify into the liquid, leaving the broth cloudy and greasy, and can toughen the meat. A gentle simmer lets the broth stay clearer and the meat tender.

Swap the clove

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, carrot, turnip, 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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