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Summer Vegetable Soup

A light soup of onions, turnip, cabbage, corn, and cream, seasoned with sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and cabbage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 897 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Summer Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare the onions and turnip.

Make the soup

  1. Place the onions, turnip, and chopped cabbage in boiling water.

  2. Season with coarse sea salt and cook until tender.

  3. Add the corn and bring to a quick boil.

  4. Cook for 5 minutes, then add the cream just before serving.

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. Turnip + cabbagetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + cabbagetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,001 recipes

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

  4. Cabbage + corntop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together234 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Turnip + corntop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together208 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

Onions
Build the savory base and add sweetness as they soften in the broth.
Turnip
Adds body and a mildly sharp, earthy flavor as it cooks until tender.
Cabbage
Contributes texture and vegetable flavor that softens during simmering.
Green corn
Adds natural sweetness and a fresh, tender bite to the soup.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, mellow body to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Adding the cream just before serving. Cream held at a long boil can separate and turn grainy, and it thins out in flavor. Adding it at the end keeps the soup smooth and rich.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, turnip, corn, cream):

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

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