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Vegetable Soup

A hearty soup made with stock, onions, turnips, carrots, celery, pearl barley, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

Prepare

  1. Prepare a strong stock.

Simmer

  1. Add chopped onions, turnips, carrots, celery, and pearl barley.

  2. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Boil slowly for four hours.

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 + barleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Chopped onions
Soften and release sweetness and savory aroma into the stock during the long cooking.
Chopped turnips
Add earthy flavor and a tender texture as they soften in the broth.
Chopped carrots
Contribute natural sweetness and color to the soup.
Chopped celery
Adds aromatic, savory depth to the broth.
Pearl barley
Releases starch as it cooks, thickening the soup and giving it a chewy texture.

The step that matters

Boil slowly for four hours. A long, slow simmer lets the barley and root vegetables become fully tender and lets their flavors blend into the stock. Boiling too hard can break vegetables apart and make the broth cloudy, so keep the heat gentle and steady.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, carrot, celery, barley, 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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