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Soup

A Recipe for Meat and Vegetable Soup

A soup made from a soup bone, water, cabbage, onion, carrot, potato, tomatoes, flour, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

A Recipe for Meat and Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Wash the soup bone and place it in a large kettle with cold water.

  2. Heat for 3 hours, then remove the bone and meat.

Add the vegetables

  1. Chop the cabbage, onion, carrot, potato, and tomatoes, and add them to the soup.

  2. Boil the mixture for 1 hour.

Finish the soup

  1. Thicken slightly with flour and season with salt and pepper.

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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  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

Soup bone
Releases flavor and gelatin into the water during long simmering, giving the broth body.
Potato
Its starch softens during boiling and helps lightly thicken the soup.
Flour
Starch that thickens the broth slightly when it is stirred in.

The step that matters

Thicken slightly with flour. Flour lumps easily if added dry to hot liquid. Blending it with a little cold water or stirring it in gradually keeps the soup smooth and evenly thickened.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, carrot, potato, tomato, flour, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, carrot, potato, tomato, flour, 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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