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Winter Soup

A hearty soup made with beef shin, vegetables, rice, split peas, and beans simmered in a reduced beef broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and beans match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,017 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Winter Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Boil the shin of beef in 2 gallons of water until reduced to 1 gallon.

  2. Remove the bones and let the broth cool until it forms a jelly.

  3. Take the desired amount of jelly for soup.

Assemble the soup

  1. Stew the vegetables or cook the rice, split peas, and beans.

  2. Combine everything in a pot with enough water and bring to a boil.

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. Rice + beanstop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,017 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Peas + beanstop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together949 recipes

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

  3. Rice + peastop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,434 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Beef + ricetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,265 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Beef + beanstop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,134 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

Shin of beef
Releases gelatin and flavor into the broth as it simmers, so the cooled broth sets into a jelly.
Split peas
Break down while cooking to thicken the soup and add body.
Beans
Add substance and soft, starchy texture to the finished soup.
Rice
Absorbs liquid and adds starchy body to the soup.

The step that matters

Reducing the beef broth to 1 gallon. Simmering long enough concentrates the flavor and extracts gelatin from the shin, which is what lets the cooled broth set into a jelly. Too little reduction gives a weak broth that will not gel.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, rice, beans):

  1. Sesamefits better
  2. Lima beansfits better
  3. Peanutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, rice, beans. 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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