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Beef, Soup

A hearty soup made with beef shin, vegetables, barley, and seasonings, served hot with mustard and catsup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Beef, Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Crack the bone of the beef and wash it.

  2. Place the beef in a kettle with cold water and boil for 2 hours until tender.

Make the soup

  1. Season with salt and pepper, then boil for 1 more hour.

  2. Add carrot, turnips, rice or barley, celery, and summer savory; cook for 15 minutes.

  3. Add diced potatoes and boil for another 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Remove the meat, bones, and serve on a dish garnished with parsley.

  2. Serve hot with mustard and catsup.

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 + summer savorytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together42 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef shin
Slow boiling tenderises the connective tissue and releases flavour into the broth.
Rice or pearl barley
Starch thickens the broth slightly and adds body as it softens.
Potatoes
Their starch softens and thickens the broth while adding bulk.
Celery
Contributes aromatic, savoury flavour to the broth as it cooks.

The step that matters

Boiling the beef until tender. Shin is full of connective tissue that needs a long, steady simmer to break down into gelatin. Cutting the heat too early leaves the meat tough and the broth thin.

Swap the summer savory

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Summer savorythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, carrot, turnip, rice, celery, potato. 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 →

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