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Alamode Beef Soup

A hearty beef soup made with shanks, bones, vegetables, and seasonings, thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Alamode Beef Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Break up the shanks and bones.

  2. Wash them in cold water.

  3. Place them in a large pot with the beef, ensuring they do not touch the bottom.

  4. Add 5 gallons of water.

Make the stock

  1. Boil gently for 6 hours.

  2. Remove the piece of beef.

  3. Add the cloves and bay leaf to the stock.

  4. Continue boiling until the water reduces to 3 gallons and the remaining meat is well dissolved, about 3 to 4 hours.

  5. Strain the stock through a gravy strainer.

  6. Skim off the fat.

  7. Return the stock to the pot.

Finish the soup

  1. Chop the vegetables.

  2. Add them along with the minced beef.

  3. Boil for 30 minutes.

  4. Thicken slightly with a flour-and-water mixture.

  5. Season with salt and pepper.

  6. Skim off any fat that rises.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Soup beef (shanks and bones)
Releases gelatin and meat flavor into the water as it simmers, giving the stock body and richness.
Flour
Starch thickens the stock slightly when mixed with water and heated.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savory depth to the stock as it simmers.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and body to the stock as it cooks.
Turnip
Adds mild sweetness and a soft, earthy texture to the soup.

The step that matters

Boil gently rather than rapidly while making the stock. A gentle simmer extracts collagen and flavor from the bones and shanks while keeping the stock clear. A hard rolling boil emulsifies fat into the liquid and makes the broth cloudy and greasy.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

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