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Excellent Cheap Soup

A hearty soup made with beef, calf's foot, liver, leeks, turnips, carrots, celery, onion, garlic, cloves, and bread crusts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Leek and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Excellent Cheap Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. In a large pot, combine the beef, calf's foot, liver, and water.

  2. Bring to a boil over medium heat, skimming off any scum that rises.

  3. Once boiling, add leeks, turnips, carrots, celery, onion, garlic, and cloves.

  4. Cover and simmer gently for 3 hours, then continue to simmer for another 3 hours.

  5. Season with salt to taste, but do not add pepper.

Strain and serve

  1. Remove from heat, strain the soup, and let it cool in an open dish.

  2. Reheat the soup before serving, optionally with rice or sago.

  3. Ten minutes before serving, place small crusts of bread in a tureen and pour some soup over them to soak.

  4. Keep the tureen warm until ready to serve the rest of the soup.

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. Leek + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Leek + carrottop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Shin of beef
Provides rich meat flavor and gelatin that gives the broth body as it simmers.
Calf's foot
Adds gelatin, which gives the finished soup a silky, full body.
Leeks
Contribute mild onion-like sweetness and aroma to the broth.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and color to the broth.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and earthy flavor as they soften in the broth.

The step that matters

Skimming the boil. Scum rising at the start is coagulated protein and impurities. Removing it as the liquid first boils keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting rather than cloudy or greasy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, liver, mutton, leek, turnip, carrot, celery):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Onionthe original
  4. Shallotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, liver, mutton, leek, turnip, carrot, celery. 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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