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Cottage Soup

A hearty beef and vegetable soup with bacon, potatoes, carrots, turnip, onion, rice, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 ↓

Cottage Soup

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Cut the beef into thin slices and the bacon into small cubes.

  2. Chop the onion, carrot, and turnip into thin pieces.

  3. Peel and dice the potatoes.

Make the soup

  1. In a large pot, heat the dripping over medium heat.

  2. Add the beef and bacon, cooking until browned.

  3. Stir in the vegetables and rice.

  4. Pour in the water and season with salt and pepper.

  5. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 1.5 to 2 hours.

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 + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lean neck of beef
Provides the main meat flavour and body as it simmers slowly in the broth.
Streaky bacon
Adds savoury, smoky fat that browns and flavours the broth.
Potatoes
Break down partly during simmering, adding starch that thickens the soup.
Rice
Releases starch during simmering, adding body to the broth.

The step that matters

Browning the beef and bacon. Browning creates deep, savoury flavours through the Maillard reaction. Crowding the pot or skipping the browning leaves the soup tasting flat and greyish.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, onion, carrot, potato, rice, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Tomatofits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Turnipthe original

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