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Vegetable Soup

A hearty soup made with bone broth, tomatoes, carrots, onions, cabbage or celery, potatoes, oats, salt, pepper, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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. Place the soup bone in 4 quarts of cold water.

  2. Bring the mixture to a simmer.

  3. Cook for about 5 hours.

  4. If there is excess grease, allow the soup to cool.

  5. Remove the grease.

Add the vegetables

  1. After 1½ hours of cooking, add the tomatoes.

  2. Add the rolled oats during the last hour of cooking.

  3. Run the vegetables through a grinder.

  4. Add the ground vegetables half an hour before serving, along with salt and pepper.

  5. Add the parsley just 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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 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 bone
Gives the broth its body and savoury flavour during long simmering.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and a bright, tangy flavour to the broth.
Rolled oats or rice
Add body and help thicken the soup as they cook.
Potatoes
Add starch that softens into the broth and gives the soup substance.

The step that matters

Removing the grease. Fat from the bone collects on top as the broth cools. If it is not removed, the soup tastes greasy and heavy. Chilling makes the fat solidify so it can be lifted off cleanly.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, carrot, onion, potato, parsley, oats, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, carrot, onion, potato, parsley, oats, pepper. 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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