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Vegetable Soup

A hearty soup of potatoes, turnips, carrots, onions, celery, mushrooms, and bread, seasoned with salt, pepper, and Worcestershire sauce.

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 celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Peel and chop the vegetables.

Simmer the soup

  1. In a large pot, combine the vegetables and water.

  2. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer until vegetables are tender.

  3. Add salt, pepper, and Worcestershire sauce.

  4. Tear the bread into pieces and add to the soup.

  5. Simmer for an additional 10 minutes 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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  5. Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Break down while simmering to give the soup body and a thicker texture.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and firm texture that holds up during long simmering.
Onions
Build savory depth as they soften and release their sugars into the broth.
Bread
Thickens the broth slightly as it softens and absorbs liquid.

The step that matters

Simmer until the vegetables are tender. Vegetables need enough time at a gentle simmer for starches and fibres to soften fully. Adding seasonings or bread too early or boiling too hard can leave hard chunks or a cloudy, uneven broth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, turnip, carrot, mushroom, celery, bread, pepper):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, turnip, carrot, mushroom, celery, bread, 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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