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Shin or Leg of Beef Soup or Ragout

A hearty soup made from beef shin or leg bones simmered with vegetables and seasoned with port wine and mushroom ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Shin or Leg of Beef Soup or Ragout

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bones

  1. Have the bone sawed into 3-4 pieces and either remove or stop the marrow with paste.

  2. Cover the bones with cold water and skim it clean.

Make the soup

  1. Add onions, carrots, turnips, celery, sweet herbs, and spices.

  2. Let it stew gently for 3.5 to 4 hours.

  3. Boil the button onions and drain them dry, ensuring they retain their shape.

  4. Add the carrots and turnips to the pot, putting them in 15 minutes earlier than the onions.

  5. Remove the meat when tender and strain the soup.

  6. Mix ¼ cup flour with a little butter or fat from the soup and stir until smooth.

  7. If necessary, strain the mixture again and return it to warm the vegetables.

Serve

  1. Serve the meat whole or cut into pieces, seasoned with pepper, salt, port wine, and mushroom ketchup.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 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 shin or leg bone
Releases collagen and marrow flavor into the water as it stews, giving the soup body and richness.
Flour
Thickens the strained broth into a smooth, lightly body-rich sauce when cooked with fat.
Button onions
Hold their shape during simmering and add mild sweetness to the finished soup.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and color to the broth as they soften.
Turnips
Contribute mild sweetness and a tender texture to the vegetables in the soup.
Port wine
Adds sweetness, depth and a rich aroma to the seasoned meat and soup.

The step that matters

Thickening the flour mixture. Flour must be blended smoothly with fat before being added to the liquid, and the mixture should be strained again if lumps form, so the soup thickens evenly without grainy pockets.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, turnip, celery, flour, butter, pepper):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Okrafits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, celery, flour, butter, pepper. 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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