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Shin of Beef Soup

A hearty soup made from shin of beef, marrow, vegetables, and flour thickening.

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

Shin of Beef Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bones and meat

  1. Break the shin of beef into small pieces, separating bone from meat and removing marrow.

  2. Place the bones in a pot, cover with cold water, and boil for 4 to 5 hours.

  3. In another pot, brown the marrow and meat over heat, stirring to prevent burning.

  4. Once browned, add 1 quart of water and the lump of salt; boil for 15 minutes.

Make the soup

  1. Add 5 quarts of water, onions, turnips, carrots, celery, sweet herbs, and pepper/spice.

  2. Simmer slowly for 4 to 5 hours.

  3. Remove the fat from the soup and take out 1 cup of the soup to cool.

  4. Stir in 2 tablespoons of flour into the cooled soup, then gradually add it back to the pot.

  5. Stir well and bring to a boil before serving.

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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Shin of beef
Provides meat and marrow that build the rich body and flavor of the broth.
Onions
Add sweetness and aromatic depth as they soften during the long simmer.
Flour
Thickens the soup when stirred in cooled liquid before it returns to the pot.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into cooled soup. Adding flour directly to hot liquid causes lumps because starch clumps before it can disperse. Mixing it into cooled soup first and adding it back gradually lets the starch hydrate evenly and thicken smoothly.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, turnip, carrot, celery, 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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