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Vegetable Soup

A hearty soup made with beef stock, barley, carrots, onions, turnip, potatoes, celery, salt, and pepper.

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

  1. Cook the barley in 1 quart of water for 2 hours.

  2. Add the beef stock and all the chopped vegetables except the potatoes.

  3. Boil gently for 1 hour or until the vegetables are almost tender.

  4. Add the potatoes and cook for an additional 15 minutes.

  5. Season with salt and pepper 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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Barley + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Barley
Thickens the broth as it cooks and gives the soup a chewy texture.
Beef stock
Forms the savory liquid base that carries the flavor of the soup.
Potatoes
Add body and starch, softening into the broth to thicken it slightly.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and color to the soup.
Onion
Builds savory depth as it softens into the broth.

The step that matters

Add the potatoes and cook for an additional 15 minutes.. Potatoes added too early turn mushy and break down, clouding the broth. Adding them after the other vegetables are nearly tender lets them cook through while keeping their shape.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, barley, carrot, turnip, potato, pepper, celery):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, barley, carrot, turnip, potato, pepper, celery. 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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