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Spring Vegetable Soup

A hearty soup made with beef and veal bones, water, salt, and spring vegetables such as carrots, celery, onion, turnip, and cauliflower.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 ↓

Spring Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Remove all fat from the beef and veal, break the bones, and extract the marrow.

  2. Place the meat and bones in a pot with 5 pints of water and add 1 teaspoon of salt.

  3. Cover and bring to a quick boil, then remove any scum that rises.

  4. Reduce heat and let it simmer for 5 hours.

Add the vegetables

  1. One hour before serving, add the sliced carrots, chopped celery, and diced onion.

  2. After 30 minutes, add the sliced turnip.

  3. After 15 minutes, add the cauliflower pieces.

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.

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 + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together286 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Shin of beef
Breaks down over long simmering to enrich the broth with body and flavour.
Knuckle of veal
Bones and connective tissue release gelatin, giving the broth a fuller, silkier texture.
Cauliflower
Adds mild body and texture to the soup as it cooks briefly at the end.

The step that matters

Removing the scum after the quick boil. Scum is coagulated protein and impurities that rise as the stock heats. Skimming it early keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting during the long simmer.

Swap the cauliflower

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, veal, carrot, celery, onion, turnip):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Cauliflowerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, veal, carrot, celery, onion, turnip. 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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