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Meat-soups

A vinegar-based beef soup with garlic, madeira or port wine, brandy, celery, carrot, and turnip.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Meat-soups

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine vinegar, garlic, madeira or port wine, and brandy in a pot.

  2. Add minced celery, carrot, and turnip for flavor.

  3. Add ox-cheek, ox-tail, or shin of beef and stew until reduced to a pulp.

  4. Break up the bones for better extraction of flavor.

  5. Use a digester for more effective cooking.

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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Clove + turniptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,233 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

Vinegar
Provides acidity that helps break down the beef and draw flavor out of the bones.
Ox-cheek, ox-tail, or shin of beef
Supplies the meat and collagen-rich bone that give the soup its body and flavor.
Madeira or port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavor to the broth.

The step that matters

Stew the beef until reduced to a pulp. Long, gentle stewing lets acid and heat break down collagen and connective tissue in the meat and bones. Stopping too early leaves the flavor and body underdeveloped.

Swap the garlic

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, clove, port wine, brandy, celery, carrot, turnip):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, clove, port wine, brandy, celery, carrot, turnip. 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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