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Vegetable Soup

A hearty vegetable soup made with pork, beef bones, potatoes, carrots, celery, onion, and cabbage.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Vegetable Soup

Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Start the broth

  1. Combine the pork, beef bones, and enough water for soup in a soup kettle.

  2. Bring the water to a boil.

Add vegetables and simmer

  1. Add the diced potatoes, carrots, celery, onion, chopped cabbage, and salt.

  2. Simmer for several hours.

  3. Remove the bones and pork before serving.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Pork + beeftop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

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

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

  4. Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

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

  5. Pork + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

What each ingredient does

Pork
Its meat and fat flavour the broth as it simmers.
Beef bones
Release collagen and flavour into the water, giving the broth body and savoury depth.
Potatoes
Their starch softens and slightly thickens the broth as they cook.
Carrots
Soften during simmering and add natural sweetness and colour.
Onion
Mellows and sweetens during long cooking, adding aroma to the broth.
Savoy cabbage
Softens during long simmering, adding mild sweetness and body to the soup.

The step that matters

Keep the simmer gentle. After bringing the water to a boil, keep it at a gentle simmer. A hard boil emulsifies fat into the broth, making it cloudy, and toughens the meat while the bones and vegetables break down unevenly.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, beef, potato, carrot, celery, onion):

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, beef, potato, carrot, celery, onion. 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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