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Beef Soup with Noodles, Rice, or Barley

A beef soup made with a shank, noodles, and optional rice or barley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 423 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Beef Soup with Noodles, Rice, or Barley

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Wash the beef shank well in soda water.

  2. Cover the beef with cold water and simmer slowly, skimming occasionally.

  3. When nearly done, add the rice or pearl barley and the small onion.

  4. Finish cooking until the rice or barley is tender.

Make the noodles

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs with the cream or milk and a pinch of salt.

  2. Mix in enough flour to form a stiff dough.

  3. Flour a board heavily and roll out the dough as for pie crust.

  4. Cut the rolled dough into fine strips using a noodle cutter or by rolling it up tightly and slicing, then shake out the noodles.

Finish the soup

  1. Cook the noodles in the boiling broth.

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. Rice + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together423 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

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

  3. Rice + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

  4. Beef + ricetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,265 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Beef + wheattop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together319 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef shank
Gives the broth its meaty flavor and body as it simmers.
Eggs
Bind the flour into a firm, elastic dough that holds its shape when cut.
Flour
Provides the starch and gluten structure that gives the noodles their body.
Rice or pearl barley
Thickens the broth slightly and adds soft, starchy body to the soup.

The step that matters

Simmering the beef slowly. A gentle simmer with skimming keeps the broth clear and tender; a hard boil makes it cloudy and toughens the meat.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, rice, egg, cream, wheat. 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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