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Tinned Meats

A soup made from tinned beef, gravy, herbs, onion, and optional vegetables, served with macaroni, eggs, or cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Tinned Meats

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gravy

  1. Open the tin and strain the gravy into a bowl.

  2. If cold, warm the tin in hot water for 10 minutes before opening.

  3. Carefully turn the meat out onto a sieve and pour hot water over it, collecting the water in a bowl below.

  4. Add the collected water to the gravy.

  5. Skim off any fat from the gravy and add water as needed.

Simmer the soup

  1. In a saucepan, combine the gravy with dried herbs, onion, vegetables, peppercorns, spice, and salt.

  2. Simmer gently for about an hour to extract flavors.

Serve

  1. Serve the broth as soup with macaroni, poached eggs, or cheese, adding marsala if desired.

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 + cheesetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,193 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  3. Onion + cheesetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,849 recipes

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

  4. Egg + cheesetop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,253 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Beef + eggtop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Tinned beef
Provides the meat and the rich gravy that forms the soup's base.
Eggs
Optional; when poached in the broth they add richness and body.
Macaroni or vermicelli
Optional; adds bulk and a starchy texture to the soup.
Grated cheese
Optional; adds savoury, salty flavour when stirred into or sprinkled over the soup.

The step that matters

Skimming the fat from the gravy. Fat that is not removed floats on the surface and makes the soup greasy and heavy on the palate, so skim it before simmering further.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, egg, cheese. 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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