Name: Vegetable Soup
Ingredients: 1 carrot, cut into thin strips; 1 turnip, cut into thin strips; 1 onion, cut into thin strips; 6 tomatoes, peeled and sliced; ½ cup boiled rice; 3 pints soup stock; 1 pint boiling water; Salt, to taste; Butter, for serving

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

Boil the carrot, turnip, and onion in a little salted water until tender. Drain and keep warm with butter.
Stew the tomatoes in a separate pot for 25 minutes.

Make the soup

Add 1 pint of boiling water to the soup stock and simmer for 30 minutes. Strain.
Return the strained stock to the heat with the cooked vegetables and boiled rice. Stew gently for 10 minutes before serving.
Season 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.

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.

Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,585 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Carrot + tomatotop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,606 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

Soup stock: Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries its flavour.
Tomatoes: Add acidity and body to the soup as they break down when stewed.
Boiled rice: Thickens the soup slightly and adds starch for body.
Carrot: Adds sweetness and firm texture once cooked until tender.
Onion: Adds savoury aroma and sweetness as it cooks until tender.

Swap the tomato

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

Leekfits better
Parsnipfits better
Okrafits better
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.