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Vegetable Soup

A simple soup of boiled potatoes, onions, turnips, and carrots, seasoned with pepper, salt, and optional lemon thyme.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Vegetable Soup

Why it works: Lemon and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,973 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Brush, peel, and slice the vegetables.

Cook and pulp

  1. Boil the vegetables in water for three hours, or longer if the carrots are old.

  2. For added flavor, include a sprig of lemon thyme for the last 20 minutes of cooking.

  3. Pulp the boiled vegetables through a colander.

Season and serve

  1. Add pepper and salt to taste, warm, and serve.

  2. If using stock, omit the dripping.

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. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Turnip + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,352 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

Potatoes
Starch that breaks down during long boiling, thickening the soup when pulped.
Onions
Release sugars and aroma during long simmering, adding savory depth to the broth.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the soup as they soften.
Turnips
Contribute mild, slightly peppery flavor and body as they cook down.

The step that matters

Pulp the boiled vegetables through a colander. The vegetables must be cooked until fully soft so they pass through the colander smoothly. Pulping while still firm leaves lumps and a coarse, uneven texture.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, onion, turnip, carrot, pepper, thyme):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Avocadofits less well
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, onion, turnip, carrot, pepper, thyme. 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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