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Vegetable Soup

A simple soup made with carrots, turnip, onion, tomatoes, boiled rice, and stock, finished with butter.

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

Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Cut carrot, turnip, onion into thin, short strips.

  2. Peel and slice tomatoes.

  3. Boil the vegetables in a little salted water until tender.

  4. Drain the vegetables and keep them hot with butter.

Make the soup

  1. Stew the tomatoes in a separate pot for 25 minutes, seasoning to taste.

  2. Add 1 pint of boiling water to the soup stock and simmer for 30 minutes.

  3. Strain the stock.

  4. Return the stock to the heat with the cooked vegetables and boiled rice.

  5. Stew gently for 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 + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Carrot
Adds sweetness and body as its vegetable mass softens in the broth.
Tomatoes
Stewed down, they add acidity, moisture and a rounder flavour to the soup.
Boiled rice
Thickens the soup slightly and adds starch for body.
Soup stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the whole soup.

The step that matters

Stewing the tomatoes. Tomatoes held at a gentle simmer for the full 25 minutes break down and lose their raw sharpness. Stopping early leaves them acidic and watery, which dulls the soup's flavour.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, onion, rice, butter. 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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