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Vegetable Soup

A clear vegetable soup made with onions, turnips, carrots, celery, butter, stock, water, sorrel or lemon, and pureed green peas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Vegetable Soup

Why it works: Turnip and sorrel match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 179 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a skillet, melt the butter and fry the onions, turnips, carrots, and celery until browned, stirring to cook evenly.

  2. Transfer the vegetables to a soup kettle and add the soup stock and hot water.

  3. Boil gently for one hour.

  4. Fifteen minutes before serving, stir in the chopped sorrel or lemon juice and the pureed green peas.

  5. Season with salt and white pepper 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.

  1. Turnip + sorreltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together179 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 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 + sorreltop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together212 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Browning in the butter adds sweetness and savory depth to the soup base.
Turnips
Hold their shape during gentle boiling and add a mild, slightly peppery body.
Carrots
Release natural sugars during cooking, adding sweetness and body to the broth.
Celery
Adds aromatic flavor and moisture as it softens in the simmering stock.
Green peas
Pureed into the soup, they thicken it slightly and add color and sweetness.

The step that matters

Browning the vegetables in butter. Frying until browned, not just softened, builds Maillard flavors that the broth alone cannot provide. Stirring keeps the pieces from scorching unevenly.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, turnip, carrot, celery, butter, sorrel, peas. 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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