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Winter Vegetable Soup

A hearty soup made with turnips, carrots, onions, celery, leeks, garlic, parsley, cloves, butter, and water, simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Winter Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scrape and dice the turnips and carrots.

  2. Peel and chop the onions.

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, melt the butter and sauté the vegetables until light yellow.

  2. Add the chopped celery and leeks, and stir for 6 minutes.

  3. Add the garlic, parsley, cloves, salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  4. Pour in the water, cover, and simmer for 3 hours, skimming off any scum.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the soup and serve.

  2. Add croutons, vermicelli, Italian pasta, or rice if desired.

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 + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 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

Butter
Adds fat and richness while the vegetables soften and turn light yellow.
Onions
Form the aromatic base of the soup as they soften in the butter.
Leeks
Add a mild onion-like sweetness and flavor to the broth.
Turnips
Contribute body and a mildly sweet, earthy flavor as they simmer.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the broth as they cook.

The step that matters

Skimming off the scum while simmering. Foam and impurities rise to the surface during simmering; removing them keeps the broth clear and free of bitter or off flavors.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, carrot, onion, butter, celery, leek, garlic):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, carrot, onion, butter, celery, leek, garlic. 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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