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Brown Soup

A hearty beef soup with veal, bacon, vegetables, herbs, and browned beef pieces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Brown Soup

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 ↓

Brown Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Boil beef in water with veal, bacon, onions, carrot, turnips, and herbs until reduced and flavorful.

  2. Cut remaining beef into small pieces, season with mixed spices, and dredge in flour.

  3. Melt butter in a frying pan and brown the beef pieces on both sides until crisp.

Finish the soup

  1. Remove beef from pan, drain, and add to the soup along with more mixed spices and salt.

  2. Boil the soup together for 45 minutes, then strain through a sieve and skim off the fat.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

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

  5. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides rich meaty flavour as it simmers into the broth and browns in the pan.
Flour
Coats the beef pieces so they brown and crisp in the butter.
Butter
Carries heat for browning the floured beef and adds richness to the pan.
Onions
Add sweetness and savoury depth to the broth as they cook down.
Veal knuckle
Releases gelatin and body into the broth during long simmering.

The step that matters

Browning the floured beef. Beef must be dry-surfaced and browned in a hot pan on both sides; crowding or steaming it leaves it grey and soft, and the browned bits add the deep flavour the soup is named for.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, veal, ham, onion, carrot, flour, butter):

  1. Leekfits about as well
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Turnipthe original
  4. Chivefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, veal, ham, onion, carrot, flour, butter. 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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