Skip to main content
Main

French Vegetable Soup

A soup made from turnips, onions, celery, potatoes, split peas, water or broth, pepper, and finished with cream and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Turnip and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,418 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

French Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the turnips, onions, celery, and potatoes.

  2. Combine all ingredients in a pot.

Cook and strain

  1. Boil until smooth.

  2. Pass the mixture through a sieve.

Serve

  1. When serving, add cream and milk.

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 + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Split peas
Thicken the soup and give it body as they break down during boiling.
Potatoes
Break down during boiling to add starch that thickens and smooths the soup.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Milk
Adds softness and creaminess, mellowing the flavour of the soup.

The step that matters

Boil until smooth. The soup must cook long enough for the split peas, potatoes and vegetables to soften fully. Under-cooked solids will not break down, leaving the sieved texture grainy rather than smooth.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, onion, celery, potato, clove, cream, milk):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, onion, celery, potato, clove, cream, milk. 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.

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesGreen PeasGreen Peas229 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipes