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French Vegetable Soup

A lamb and vegetable soup made by simmering a leg of lamb with carrots, potatoes, onions, tomatoes, cabbage, and turnips.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

French Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Boil the leg of lamb in a large pot with 4 quarts of water.

  2. Let the lamb cool, then skim off the fat that rises to the top.

Finish the soup

  1. Return the lamb to the pot the next day and add the chopped carrots, potatoes, onions, tomatoes, cabbage, and turnips.

  2. Boil the soup for 3 hours on the second day.

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. Cabbage + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Potato + tomatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,798 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

Leg of lamb
Gives the soup its main meat flavour and body as it simmers in the broth.
Potatoes
Soften during long simmering and help thicken the soup slightly.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and hold their shape through the long boil.
Turnips
Contribute a mild, slightly peppery flavour and tender texture to the broth.

The step that matters

Skimming the fat after cooling. Fat rises and sets on top of cooled broth, so it lifts off cleanly. Skimming before reheating keeps the soup from tasting greasy.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, carrot, potato, onion, cabbage, turnip, pepper. 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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