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Vegetable Soup

A simple vegetable soup made with butter, flour, water, onions, turnips, carrots, tomatoes, and cayenne, served with parsley and crackers.

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 base

  1. Blend the butter with the flour in a pot.

  2. Pour in the boiling water while stirring constantly.

  3. Cook for 15 minutes.

Cook the vegetables

  1. Add the onion, turnip, and carrot, along with salt and cayenne.

  2. Boil for 30 minutes.

  3. Skim out the vegetables.

  4. Add the tomatoes.

  5. Boil for an additional 15 to 20 minutes.

  6. Strain the soup.

Serve

  1. Serve with minced parsley stirred in.

  2. Pass small oyster crackers or Saratoga chips with the soup.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor into the soup base.
Flour
Thickens the broth slightly as it cooks with the butter and water.
Onion
Builds savory, sweet flavor as it simmers in the broth.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and body to the soup as it softens.
Turnip
Contributes earthy flavor and soft texture after long simmering.
Tomatoes
Adds acidity and color to the broth.

The step that matters

Blending the butter with the flour before adding water. Stirring the boiling water in constantly while the flour is evenly blended in prevents lumps. Flour clumps form when starch hits hot liquid unevenly, and those lumps are hard to remove once the soup thickens.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, onion, turnip, carrot, parsley, oyster. 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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