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Ceeam of Vegetable Soup

A creamy soup made with celery, turnip, carrot, onion, bay leaf, mace, parsley, flour, milk, egg yolks, and cream.

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

Ceeam of Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the chopped celery, turnip, carrot, minced onion, bay leaf, mace, and parsley.

  3. Cook for 30 minutes, stirring to prevent browning.

  4. Add the flour and blend well.

Finish the soup

  1. Gradually pour in the hot milk and cook in a double boiler for 30 more minutes.

  2. Season with salt and pepper, then strain the soup.

  3. Just before serving, stir in the beaten egg yolks and cream.

  4. Serve with croutons.

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.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the base and carries the flavor of the aromatics during cooking.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, body-rich cream soup.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base that gives the soup its body.
Egg yolks
Add richness and thicken the soup gently when stirred in at the end.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel.
Carrot
Contributes sweetness and color to the vegetable base.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks and cream. Egg yolks thicken when heated, so if the soup is too hot when they go in, they can curdle and turn grainy. Add them just before serving, off the heat or at low heat, while stirring steadily.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, celery, turnip, carrot, onion, parsley, flour):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, celery, turnip, carrot, onion, parsley, flour. 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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