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Matzo Soup

A hearty beef broth with carrots, celery, onions, and turnips, finished with matzo flour, suet, and egg balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 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 ↓

Matzo Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Boil the gravy beef, shin of beef, and calf's foot in water with seasoning, carrots, celery, browned onions, turnips, and sweet herbs.

  2. Stew gently for 8 hours, then strain and refrigerate to remove fat when cold.

Make and add the matzo balls

  1. Twenty minutes before serving, mix matzo flour, suet, and beaten eggs; season with pepper, salt, ginger, and nutmeg.

  2. Form the mixture into balls and add to the warming soup.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + celerytop 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

Gravy beef
Gives the broth its rich beefy flavour and body as it simmers for hours.
Shin of beef
Adds collagen that gives the stock a fuller, silkier body.
Matzo flour
Forms the base of the dumplings, giving them structure once combined with eggs.
Eggs
Bind the matzo mixture so the balls hold their shape.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the matzo balls tender and moist.

The step that matters

Chilling and skimming the broth. Cooling the strained stock lets the fat rise and solidify so it can be removed, leaving a clearer, less greasy soup.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, carrot, celery, turnip, flour, egg. 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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