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Plain Economical Soup

A hearty soup made with beef bone, turkey or chicken, vegetables, flour, and toast.

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

Plain Economical Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Place the beef bone, beef steak, and turkey or chicken rack in a pot with water.

  2. Add the chopped carrots, turnips, onion, cloves, pepper, and salt.

  3. Boil gently for 4 hours.

  4. Strain the soup through a colander, mashing the vegetables to extract flavor.

Thicken and serve

  1. Return the soup to the pot, mix in flour with a little water, and boil for 10 minutes.

  2. Serve the soup with snippets of toast.

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. Turnip + oniontop 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

Beef bone
Releases gelatin and savory flavor into the water during long simmering, giving body to the broth.
Turkey or chicken rack
Adds meaty flavor and gelatin to the broth as it simmers.
Carrots
Contribute sweetness and aroma, and their pulp thickens the soup when mashed through.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and body to the broth when simmered and mashed.
Flour
Thickens the broth as it boils, giving it a more velvety texture.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour into the soup. Flour added directly to hot liquid forms lumps that will not disperse. Mixing it first with a little cold water into a smooth slurry lets the starch hydrate evenly, so the soup thickens smoothly during the 10-minute boil.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, turkey, carrot, turnip, clove, 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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