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Beetroot Soup

A simple beetroot soup made with boiled beetroots, onions, stock, cornflour, thyme, vinegar, brown sugar, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,585 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Beetroot Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Peel the beetroots and boil them until tender.

  2. Mince the boiled beetroots finely and add them to the cooking water or stock.

  3. Add a small amount of cornflour for consistency and a pinch of thyme.

  4. Stir in vinegar, brown sugar, and season with pepper and salt to taste.

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. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  2. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Beetroot + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Beetroot + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,261 recipes

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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

Beetroots
Provide the main body, earthy flavour and the soup's deep colour.
Onions
Add savoury depth and aromatic sweetness to the base.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the earthy beet flavour.
Brown sugar
Balances the acidity with a mild sweetness and rounds out the flavour.
Cornflour
Thickens the liquid slightly to give the soup a smoother consistency.

The step that matters

Adding the cornflour. Cornflour thickens when heated in liquid, so only a very small amount should be used and it should be mixed in well to avoid lumps or an overly thick, pasty soup.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beetroot, thyme, vinegar, sugar, pepper):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beetroot, thyme, vinegar, sugar, 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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