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Beef and Sago Soup

A slow-cooked beef soup with sago, onion, and egg, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Beef and Sago Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Combine beef, onion, and water in a pot.

  2. Cook gently for 4 hours until the liquid reduces to 2 quarts.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

  4. Set aside until the next day.

  5. Skim off the fat.

  6. Strain through a coarse cloth.

Clarify and thicken

  1. Return the stock to the fire and bring to a boil.

  2. Add the white and shell of an egg and boil slowly for 5 minutes.

  3. Strain again without squeezing.

  4. Return to the fire with the soaked sago and simmer for 15 minutes.

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. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  2. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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

Coarse beef
Provides the meat flavour and richness that give the stock its body.
German sago
Swells when cooked, thickening the soup and giving it a soft, translucent texture.
Egg white and shell (in the method)
Attracts fine particles as it cooks, so straining leaves a clearer stock.

The step that matters

Strain again without squeezing. Squeezing the cloth pushes cloudy particles through and undoes the clarifying work of the egg, leaving the stock murky.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, 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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