Skip to main content
Main

Vegetable Soup

A hearty vegetable soup made with turnip, carrot, onion, celery, and a butter‑flour roux.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Vegetable Soup

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the vegetables

  1. Combine the turnip, carrot, onions, celery, and 2 quarts of water in a large pot.

  2. Boil until the vegetables are tender and the water is nearly absorbed.

  3. Rub the mixture through a sieve into another pot.

  4. Add the remaining 3 pints of water.

  5. Bring to a boil.

Finish the soup

  1. Soften the butter with a little hot soup.

  2. Mix in the flour, salt, and pepper until smooth.

  3. Stir the butter mixture into the boiling soup.

  4. Let it cook for 2–3 minutes before serving.

  5. If desired, add cream for a richer flavor.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Softened and mixed with flour, it enriches the soup and helps thicken it smoothly.
Flour
Combined with the softened butter, it thickens the soup and gives it a smoother body.
Turnip
Cooked until tender and sieved, it forms the main body and flavor of the soup.
Carrot
Cooked and puréed, it adds sweetness and body to the soup.
Onions
Softened during boiling, they add savory depth to the soup.

The step that matters

Stir the butter mixture into the boiling soup. Flour thickens best when it is evenly blended with fat first; stirring it into boiling liquid keeps it from clumping and lets it thicken smoothly.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, carrot, celery, flour, butter, pepper, parsley. 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.

More vegetable soup recipes

Spring 46Beef 45Winter 31French 11Lentil 9Clear 8 See all 425 →

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesTurnip SoupTurnip Soup43 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipes