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Meatless Vegetable Soup

A vegetable soup made with carrots, turnips, onions, cabbage, tomatoes, herbs, and sweet cream, seasoned with pepper, salt, sugar, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Meatless Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Simmer the chopped carrots, turnips, and onions in boiling water for 30 minutes.

  2. Add the stewed tomatoes, chopped cabbage, and herbs, and boil for 20 minutes.

  3. Strain the soup and season with pepper, salt, and sugar.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir the flour into the water, then add to the soup along with the sweet cream.

  2. Allow the soup to boil briefly, then serve with a dash of cayenne pepper for 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.

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 + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet cream
Adds richness and body, softening the soup's flavor and mouthfeel.
Flour
Stirred into water first, it thickens the soup slightly as it heats.
Onions
Build sweetness and savory depth as they soften in the broth.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body as they cook down in the soup.
Turnips
Contribute mild, slightly peppery flavor and substance to the vegetables.
Stewed tomatoes
Add acidity and tomato flavor that balances the sweet vegetables.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and cream. Flour stirred into cold water first disperses without lumps; added to hot soup it can clump. Boiling the cream-enriched soup briefly is needed to thicken the flour, but over-boiling dairy can cause curdling or separation.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, onion, cabbage, pepper, sugar, cream):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, onion, cabbage, pepper, sugar, 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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