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A hearty beef soup simmered with spices, carrots, celery root, and optional ham and neck of beef.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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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 and divide the knuckle.

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

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

Make the soup

  1. Add 1.5 ounces of coarse sea salt, ½ teaspoon black peppercorns, 8 cloves, 2 blades of mace, a bunch of savory herbs, 2 small carrots, and the heart of a celery root.

  2. Optionally, add 1 mild onion.

  3. Stew the mixture very softly for 4 hours.

  4. Check the larger piece of beef for tenderness; if tender, remove it for serving.

  5. Simmer the soup for an additional 2 to 3 hours, then strain it through a fine sieve into a clean pan.

Season and finish

  1. Once the soup is cold, remove all fat.

  2. Heat 2 quarts of the soup, stir in ½ ounce of sugar, 1 tablespoon of soy sauce, and 2 tablespoons of mushroom ketchup.

  3. For added flavor, include a thick slice of lean ham and 1 pound of neck of beef with an additional pint of water.

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 and the rich, savory body of the broth as it simmers.
Water
Extracts flavor and gelatin from the beef and knuckle to form the broth.
Carrots
Add gentle sweetness and aromatic depth to the broth.
Celery root
Adds earthy, savory aroma that rounds out the broth.
Sugar
Balances saltiness and savory flavor with a touch of sweetness.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savory, umami depth to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Bring the water to a boil slowly, skimming off any foam. Heating gently lets proteins and impurities rise as foam that can be skimmed away, giving a clearer, cleaner-tasting broth. Rapid boiling emulsifies fat and debris into the liquid, making the soup cloudy and greasy.

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.

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