Skip to main content
Main

Vegetable Soup

A hearty vegetable soup made with carrots, turnips, onions, celery, leeks, garlic, parsley, and butter, simmered in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Vegetable Soup

Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a pot and fry the carrots, turnips, and onions until they turn yellow.

  2. Add the celery and leeks, stir, and fry for about 6 minutes.

  3. Add the garlic, salt, pepper, cloves, parsley, and cover with water.

  4. Simmer on low heat for about 3 hours, skimming off any scum.

  5. Strain the soup and serve.

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 + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Carrots
Add sweetness and body as they soften during frying and simmering.
Onions
Build a savoury base through frying, which browns their sugars and adds depth.
Turnips
Contribute mild sweetness and a starchy body to the broth.
Celery
Adds aromatic, savoury flavour that deepens during the long simmer.
Leeks
Add a mild onion-like sweetness and aroma to the soup base.

The step that matters

Skimming off any scum during the simmer. Scum rises from proteins and impurities released as the vegetables cook in water. Removing it keeps the broth clearer and cleaner in flavour.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, onion, celery, leek, garlic, 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.

More vegetable soup recipes

Spring 46Beef 45Winter 31French 11Lentil 9Clear 8 See all 425 →

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesTurnip SoupTurnip Soup43 recipesLeek SoupLeek Soup31 recipes