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Beef Soup

A hearty beef soup with onions, celery, cabbage, potatoes, carrots, parsley, butter, flour, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Beef Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Start the broth

  1. Place the beef in a large kettle with the cold water and salt.

  2. Start cooking soon after breakfast.

  3. Skim off any foam that rises when it boils.

  4. Let it boil slowly until one hour before dinner.

Add the vegetables

  1. Add the onions, celery, cabbage, potatoes, carrots, and parsley.

Thicken and season

  1. In a skillet, melt the butter, then stir in the flour until browned.

  2. Add the browned mixture to the soup.

  3. Season with pepper and salt.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  4. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  5. Potato + carrottop 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
Provides the main flavor and meaty body as it simmers slowly in the broth.
Potatoes
Starch that softens into the broth and adds body to the soup.
Flour
Browned in butter and stirred in, it thickens the broth and adds a toasted flavor.
Butter
Fat that is melted and used to brown the flour, adding richness.
Onions
Add savory sweetness and aroma as they cook into the broth.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour until browned. Flour cooked in butter must be stirred continuously until it turns golden; if it is added raw or left to scorch, it can taste pasty or bitter and will not thicken the soup smoothly.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, onion, celery, potato, carrot, parsley, butter):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, celery, potato, carrot, parsley, butter. 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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