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Soup

Vegetable Soup

A hearty soup made with onions, butter, turnips, parsnips, leeks, carrots, celery, sorrel, potato, French beans, peas, and optional rice or barley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Vegetable Soup

Why it works: Leek and sorrel match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 112 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and brown the onion.

  2. Add the turnips, parsnips, leeks, carrots, white carrot, celery, sorrel, potato, French beans, and green peas.

  3. Toss and brown the vegetables in the butter, seasoning with salt and pepper.

  4. Pour in a little water or stock, crush the vegetables slightly, then fill up with more water.

  5. Let the soup simmer for two hours.

  6. If desired, add a little rice or pearl barley.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Leek + sorreltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together112 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + sorreltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together179 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together590 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Parsnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together165 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
Browns the onion and vegetables, adding richness and a toasty flavour.
Onion
Browns in the butter to build a sweet, savoury base for the soup.
Potato
Breaks down during simmering to thicken the soup and give it body.
Turnips, parsnips, leeks, carrots
Release their natural sweetness and flavour into the broth as they simmer.

The step that matters

Browning the vegetables in butter. Browning caramelises the natural sugars and proteins in the onion and vegetables, producing deeper flavour. Pale vegetables taste flat, so they need enough heat and time without burning.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Beetrootfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Endivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, turnip, parsnip, leek, carrot, celery, sorrel. 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.

More vegetable soup recipes

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