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Vegetable Soup

A hearty soup made with meat, vegetables, tomatoes, and rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Vegetable Soup

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Boil the meat for 4 hours, then set it aside until the next day.

  2. Remove the grease and add the rice; let it cook on low heat.

Add the vegetables

  1. Chop the onion, celery, potato, carrot, and parsley, and cook them separately until done.

  2. Pour the cooked vegetables into the broth with the can of tomatoes, and cook on medium heat.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Celery + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Soup meat
Simmers for hours to release flavour and body into the broth.
Rice
Absorbs liquid and thickens the soup as it cooks.
Strained tomatoes
Add acidity, colour and a rich tomato flavour to the broth.
Potato
Softens and adds starch that gives the soup more body.

The step that matters

Removing the grease. Fat rises to the surface of a long-simmered broth and can make the soup greasy and heavy. Skimming it off before adding the rice and vegetables leaves a cleaner, lighter flavour.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, celery, potato, carrot, parsley, tomato, rice):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, celery, potato, carrot, parsley, tomato, rice. 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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