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Beef Soup

A hearty beef soup with onions, potatoes, cabbage, barley, tomato, turnip, and optional milk, served with dumplings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 897 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Beef Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the beef

  1. Cover the beef with cold water and cook early in the morning.

  2. Remove all scum as soon as it reaches boiling point.

Add the vegetables and seasoning

  1. One hour before serving, add onions, potatoes, cabbage, pearl barley, tomato, and turnip.

  2. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

  3. When done, you may pass the soup through a potato ricer if preferred.

  4. If desired, add 1 cup of rich milk last.

Make and cook the dumplings

  1. For dumplings, sift flour, baking powder, and salt into a bowl.

  2. Make a very stiff dough with a little sweet milk.

  3. Drop spoonfuls of the dough into the soup.

  4. Let the soup boil for 15 minutes, keeping covered.

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. Cabbage + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Barley + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  4. Potato + tomatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,798 recipes

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

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

Beef
Provides the main flavour and body of the broth as it simmers.
Potatoes
Thicken the soup slightly as they break down and add starchy body.
Flour
Forms the structure of the dumplings, which set into soft, dense pieces in the broth.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dumpling dough so the dumplings rise and lighten.
Pearl barley
Releases starch as it simmers, adding thickness and a chewy texture.

The step that matters

Remove all scum as soon as it reaches boiling point. Scum is coagulated protein and impurities that rise at first boil. Skimming it early keeps the broth clear and free of bitter, greasy off-flavours.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, onion, potato, cabbage, barley, turnip, pepper):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, potato, cabbage, barley, turnip, pepper. 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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