Name: Klarc Ruuhiippe, or Fleischhruhe - Clear Soup
Ingredients: 6 pounds beef; 6 quarts water; 1 head celery; 1 carrot; 1-2 turnips; 1 onion; a few sprigs parsley; salt to taste; optional: 2 pounds breast of veal or 1 old fowl, 1-2 pounds liver or a ham-bone

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 ↓

Klarc Ruuhiippe, or Fleischhruhe - Clear Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

Place the beef in a large pot with cold water.
Heat slowly until it simmers, skimming off any foam.

Simmer

Add celery, carrot, turnips, onion, parsley, and salt.
For a richer soup, add veal, fowl, liver, or ham-bone.
Cover and let simmer for 3-4 hours.
Reduce the quantity to less than half during cooking.

Strain and finish

Strain the soup and remove the fat.

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.

Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,053 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,173 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,810 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,418 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

Beef: Releases flavor and gelatin into the water, giving the broth body and savoriness.
Celery: Adds aromatic, savory flavor to the broth as it simmers.
Carrot: Adds subtle sweetness and aromatic depth to the broth.
Onion: Contributes savory, aromatic flavor that deepens during simmering.

The step that matters

Heat slowly and skim the foam. Bringing the pot up to a simmer gently lets impurities and coagulated proteins rise as foam, which can be skimmed off. Boiling hard emulsifies them into the liquid, leaving the broth cloudy rather than clear.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, celery, carrot, turnip, parsley, veal):

Parsnipfits better
Leekfits better
Okrafits about as well
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, celery, carrot, turnip, parsley, veal. 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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Klarc Ruuhiippe, or Fleischhruhe - Clear Soup