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Vegetable Soup

A hearty soup made with beef shank, tomatoes, beans, corn, cabbage, potatoes, turnip, carrot, onion, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Vegetable Soup

Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Vegetable Soup

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Wash the beef shank in several waters and break the bone.

  2. Place the shank in a large pot with cold water and bring to a steady boil.

  3. Boil for several hours until one hour before dinner.

  4. Skim off all grease and strain the soup.

Add vegetables and thicken

  1. Add the prepared vegetables to the soup.

  2. Boil for an additional hour.

  3. Mix the flour with the milk and thicken the soup.

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cabbage + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Corn + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together938 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Tomato + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,798 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

Beef shank
Gives the broth its meaty flavor and body as it simmers for hours.
Lima or butter beans
Add starchy body and texture that holds up through long simmering.
Irish potatoes
Their starch helps thicken the soup and adds substance.
Flour
Mixed with milk to thicken the soup into a smoother, heavier broth.
Milk
Combined with flour to add richness and help thicken the soup.
Tomatoes
Contribute acidity and moisture that give the soup its tangy base.

The step that matters

Mix the flour with the milk before adding it to the soup. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps instead of dispersing. Whisking it first into the milk to form a smooth slurry lets the starch hydrate evenly, so the soup thickens without lumps.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, tomato, butter, corn, potato, turnip, carrot):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, tomato, butter, corn, potato, turnip, carrot. 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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