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Thick Beef Soup

A hearty beef soup with barley, leeks, onions, celery, and herbs, simmered for several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Leek and barley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 142 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Thick Beef Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. In a large pot, boil 8 quarts of water gently for 7 hours with the beef and sweet herbs, skimming regularly.

  2. Strain the broth and let it cool overnight to remove the fat.

  3. Remove gristly and sinewy parts from the bones and add them back to the soup.

Finish the soup

  1. Add leeks, onions, celery, pepper, salt, and parboiled Scotch barley.

  2. Boil gently for 2 to 3 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. Leek + barleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together142 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Leek + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Leek + oniontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,326 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Celery + barleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together571 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef shin or leg
Slow simmering breaks down connective tissue, giving the broth body and tender meat.
Scotch barley
Swells as it simmers, thickening the soup and adding a chewy texture.
Leeks
Add a mild, sweet onion flavour that builds the soup's savoury base.
Onions
Release sugars and aromatic compounds during simmering, deepening the broth's flavour.
Celery
Adds a vegetal, aromatic note that rounds out the broth.

The step that matters

Cooling the broth overnight before skimming. Fat solidifies on cold broth and lifts off easily as a layer. Skipping the chill leaves greasy fat floating in the soup.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, leek, celery, pepper, barley):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, leek, celery, pepper, barley. 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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