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Beef Soup

A hearty soup made with beef, cabbage, carrots, celery, potatoes, onions, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Beef Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Place the beef in a large kettle with cold water and salt.

  2. Cook soon after breakfast.

  3. Skim off any scum that rises when it boils.

  4. Let it boil slowly until one hour before dinner.

Finish the soup

  1. Add the onions, cabbage, carrots, celery, potatoes, and parsley.

  2. Melt the butter in a skillet and stir in the flour until browned.

  3. Add the browned mixture to the soup.

  4. Season with pepper and salt.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  5. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the meat and rich flavor that the broth is built on.
Potatoes
Add starch that softens during simmering and thickens the soup slightly.
Flour
Browned in butter, it thickens the soup and adds a toasty, nutty flavor.
Onions
Contribute sweetness and aroma as they soften in the broth.
Cabbage
Adds body and a mild sweetness as it cooks down in the soup.

The step that matters

Skimming the scum as it boils. Scum is coagulated protein and impurities that rise from the meat; removing it keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting. Skimming early matters because it is easiest before the liquid is simmering vigorously and the scum has been stirred back in.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, onion, carrot, celery, potato, parsley, butter):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, carrot, celery, potato, parsley, 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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