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Vegetable Soup

A hearty vegetable soup made with carrots, parsnip, potato, turnip, celery, onions, mushrooms, and seasoned with butter, flour, mustard, and Harvey's sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Isabella Beeton · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 25 ingredients
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Illustration of Vegetable SoupIllustration

Why it works: Celery and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 4,160 recipes mention both. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

The recipe

8 persons (also listed as 16 persons)

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Also mentioned in the method: butter

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil the vegetables in the water for 2½ hours; stir often, adding more water if it boils away too quickly, so that there are 2 quarts of soup when done.

  2. Mix butter, flour, mustard, salt, and pepper with a teacupful of cold water in a basin.

  3. Stir the mixture into the soup and boil for 10 minutes.

  4. Prepare the yolks of the eggs in the tureen; pour them into the soup, stir well, and serve.

Prepare and toss the vegetables

  1. Cut up the onions, carrots, and turnips; wash and drain them well.

  2. Put the vegetables in the stewpan with butter and powdered sugar.

  3. Toss the mixture over a sharp fire for 10 minutes, without letting them brown.

  4. When done, pour the stock or boiling water over them.

Stew and strain

  1. Add the bread, celery, herbs, and seasoning.

  2. Stew for 3 hours; skim well and strain it off.

  3. When ready to serve, add a little sliced carrot, celery, and turnip, and flavor with a spoonful of Harvey's sauce or a little ketchup.

Alternative method

  1. Peel the vegetables and cut them into small pieces.

  2. Toast the bread until brown, then put all into a stewpan with water and seasoning.

  3. Simmer gently for 3 hours, or until all is reduced to a pulp.

  4. Pass the soup through a sieve in the same way as pea-soup, so it resembles pea-soup in consistency, but it should be a dark brown colour.

  5. Warm it up again when required.

  6. Add Harvey's sauce and, if necessary, add to the flavouring.

By Isabella Beeton. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

The picture is an illustration, not a photo of this recipe · 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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Celery + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together4,160 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Celery + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together16,001 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Celery + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,045 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Mustard + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,339 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,303 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

Flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks with the butter and mustard.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and thicken the soup when stirred in at the end.
Potatoes
Break down during long simmering to give the soup body.
Onions
Build savoury depth as they soften in the stock.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and colour to the soup.
Celery
Adds a fresh, aromatic savoury note to the stock.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Egg yolk proteins set when heated, so they can curdle into lumps if poured into boiling soup. Adding them off the heat and stirring well lets them thicken the soup smoothly.

Flavor stand-ins for the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, celery, sugar, pepper, sauce, mustard, egg):

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Horseradishbetter flavor fit
  3. Carrotabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, celery, sugar, pepper, sauce, mustard, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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