Skip to main content
Main

Vegetable Soup

A hearty soup made with beef shank, tomatoes, beans, corn, cabbage, potatoes, turnip, carrot, onion, parsley, pepper sauce, flour, milk, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Vegetable Soup

Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Vegetable Soup

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Wash the beef shank in several waters and break the bone.

  2. Place the shank in a large pot of cold water and boil steadily.

  3. After boiling for several hours, skim off all grease and strain the soup.

Finish the soup

  1. Add the prepared vegetables to the soup.

  2. Boil for one hour.

  3. Mix the flour with the milk and thicken the soup.

  4. 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cabbage + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Corn + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together938 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Tomato + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,798 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 shank
Gives the soup its meaty flavour and body as it simmers for hours.
Flour
Thickens the soup when mixed with milk and stirred in.
Milk
Mixed with the flour to help thicken the soup and add richness.
Lima or butter beans
Add starch and body, helping the soup feel hearty and thick.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and liquid, giving the broth a bright, savoury base.

The step that matters

Skimming the grease after boiling. Fat rises to the surface during long simmering and can make the broth greasy and heavy. Skimming it off before adding vegetables gives a cleaner, lighter soup.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, tomato, butter, corn, potato, turnip, carrot):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, tomato, butter, corn, potato, turnip, carrot. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesPotato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesCorn FrittersCorn Fritters203 recipes