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Winter Vegetable Soup

A hearty soup of turnips, carrots, onions, celery, leeks, garlic, parsley, cloves, nutmeg, 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 the base

  1. In a large pot, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the turnips, carrots, and onions; fry until light yellow.

  3. Stir in the celery and leeks; fry for an additional 6 minutes.

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

Simmer and serve

  1. Cover with water and bring to a simmer.

  2. Simmer for 3 hours, skimming off any scum.

  3. Strain the soup and serve. 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

Turnips
Give the soup its earthy, mildly sweet body as they soften during the long simmer.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and color, and thicken the broth as they break down.
Onions
Build savory depth through browning and release sweetness as they cook slowly.
Butter
Carries fat for frying the vegetables, adding richness and helping them brown lightly.
Celery
Contributes savory, aromatic flavor that underpins the broth.
Leeks
Add a mild onion-like sweetness and aroma to the broth.

The step that matters

Frying the vegetables until light yellow. Frying gently softens the vegetables and begins browning their natural sugars, building flavor before the water goes in. Frying too hot can scorch the butter and turn the soup bitter.

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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