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Vegetable Soup

A simple soup of barley or rice, onions, potatoes, carrots, tomatoes, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Vegetable Soup

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 ↓

Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil barley or rice with chopped onions until the onions are tender.

  2. Add sliced potatoes and optional carrots, and boil until well done.

  3. Skim off any scum that rises while boiling.

  4. Add tomatoes for improvement if desired.

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

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

  2. Potato + carrottop 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. Barley + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together165 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Barley + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together784 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Barley or rice
Its starch thickens the broth and gives it body as it cooks.
Onions
They soften and sweeten as they cook, forming the savoury base of the broth.
Potatoes
Their starch softens and lightly thickens the broth.
Tomatoes
They add acidity and savoury depth to the broth.

The step that matters

Skimming the scum while boiling. Scum is foam and impurities that rise to the surface as the soup boils. Skimming it off keeps the broth clear and stops off flavours from spreading through the soup.

Swap the carrot

The recipe marks carrot as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (barley, onion, potato, tomato):

  1. Okrafits about as well
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, onion, potato, tomato. 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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