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Vegetable Soup

A hearty soup made with beef shank, tomatoes, beans, corn, cabbage, potatoes, turnip, carrot, onion, parsley, and seasoned with pepper sauce.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Wash the beef shank in several waters, break the bone, and place it in a large pot of cold water.

  2. Boil steadily until one hour before dinner.

  3. Carefully skim off all grease and strain the broth.

Add the vegetables

  1. Add the tomatoes, beans, corn, cabbage, potatoes, turnip, carrot, onion, and parsley to the broth.

  2. Boil for one hour.

Thicken and serve

  1. Thicken the soup with the flour mixed into the milk.

  2. 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
Its bone and connective tissue release flavour and body into the broth during long simmering.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and savoury depth that balance the rich broth and vegetables.
Lima or butter beans
Starchy and creamy, they add body and a soft texture to the soup.
Irish potatoes
Their starch softens during boiling and helps thicken the broth slightly.
Flour
Starch swells in the hot liquid and thickens the soup.

The step that matters

Mix the flour into the milk before thickening. Flour dispersed in cold milk first hydrates evenly, so its starch thickens the soup smoothly instead of forming lumps when it meets the hot broth.

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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