Skip to main content
Main

Modern Cookery

A beef soup simmered with spices, carrots, celery, soy sauce, and mushroom ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and celery 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 ↓

Modern Cookery

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Have the butcher cut 5 or 6 even pieces from the thick fleshy part of the beef.

  2. Divide the knuckle.

  3. Place the beef in a large pot and add 3 quarts of cold water.

  4. Bring the water to a boil slowly, skimming off any foam.

Make the soup

  1. Add the salt, peppercorns, cloves, mace, savory herbs, carrots, heart of celery, and onion if using.

  2. Stew the mixture gently for 4 hours until the beef is tender.

  3. Remove the beef.

  4. Let the soup simmer for an additional 2 to 3 hours.

  5. Strain the soup through a fine sieve into a clean pan.

  6. Once cooled, remove any fat from the surface.

Finish and season

  1. Heat 2 quarts of the strained soup.

  2. When boiling, stir in the sugar, soy sauce, and mushroom ketchup or Harvey's sauce.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Clove + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  5. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the meat flavour and gelatin that give the broth body as it simmers.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and aromatic depth to the broth as they cook.
Celery heart
Adds savoury, aromatic flavour to the broth during the long simmer.
Sugar
Balances the saltiness and savoury depth of the finished soup with mild sweetness.
Soy sauce
Adds savoury umami depth and a richer colour to the broth.
Mushroom ketchup or harvey's sauce
Adds concentrated savoury, umami flavour to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Skimming the foam as the water comes to a boil. Foam carries coagulated proteins and impurities from the meat. Removing it early keeps the broth clearer and cleaner in flavour, and it is easy to forget while the pot heats slowly.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, clove, mace, carrot, celery, sugar, sauce):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, clove, mace, carrot, celery, sugar, sauce. 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.

More beef soup recipes

Clear 34Brown 23Quick 12French 6Barley 5Economical 4 See all 245 →

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipes