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Nice Family Soup

A hearty soup of beef, peas, potatoes, rice, celery, carrot, and onion simmered in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot 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 ↓

Nice Family Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soup

  1. Cut the beef into 1‑inch pieces.

  2. Combine beef, peas, potatoes, onion, rice, and water in a large pot.

  3. Boil until reduced to 5 pints.

  4. Strain the mixture through a sieve and return the liquid to the saucepan.

Finish and serve

  1. Add grated celery and carrot to the soup.

  2. Stew well.

  3. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  4. Place toasted bread in a tureen, pour the soup over it, and serve hot.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

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

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  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
Provides the main meaty flavor and substance of the soup.
Gray peas
Thicken the broth and add body and earthy flavor as they soften.
Potatoes
Break down during simmering to add starch and thicken the soup.
Rice
Releases starch as it cooks, adding body to the broth.
Celery
Adds aromatic, savory flavor to the soup base.

The step that matters

Boil until reduced to 5 pints. Boiling concentrates the broth and the starch released by the peas, potatoes and rice. Reducing too little leaves the soup thin, while reducing too far makes it overly thick and salty once seasoned.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Sesamefits better
  3. Black-eyed peafits better
  4. Peasthe original

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