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Vegetable Soup

A soup made from turnip, carrot, onion, celery, and optional parsnip, thickened with butter and flour, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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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

Make the vegetable base

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

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

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

Finish the soup

  1. Add the remaining 3 pints of water and bring to a boil.

  2. Soften the butter with a little hot soup, then mix with flour, salt, and pepper until smooth.

  3. Stir the butter mixture into the boiling soup and cook for 2-3 minutes.

  4. Serve hot, optionally adding cream.

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

Turnip
Provides the bulk and body of the soup as it softens and breaks down.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and color, and thickens the purée as it breaks down.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor and smoothing the finished soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup when cooked with butter, giving it a smooth, fuller body.
Onions
Contribute savory depth and aroma as they soften into the base.
Celery
Adds aromatic flavor to the vegetable base as it cooks down.

The step that matters

Stirring the butter and flour mixture into the boiling soup. Flour clumps if it hits hot liquid unevenly. Softening it into a smooth paste first and stirring it into a boil keeps the soup silky, and cooking it a few minutes removes the raw flour taste and lets the starch thicken fully.

Swap the carrot

The recipe marks carrot as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, onion, celery, flour, butter, pepper, parsley):

  1. Carrotthe original
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Parsnipfits about as well
  4. Okrafits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, onion, 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.

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