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Soup

Vegetable Soup

A simple soup made with a soup bone, water, salt, onion, carrot, cabbage, tomato, turnip, and potato.

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

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

Make the broth

  1. Boil the soup bone in plenty of water all day.

  2. Strain the broth and add a little coarse sea salt.

  3. Let it stand until the next day.

Finish the soup

  1. The next morning, boil the broth steadily until about an hour before dinner.

  2. Season to taste and add the chopped onion, carrot, cabbage, tomato, turnip, and potato.

  3. Cook until the vegetables are tender.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cabbage + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Tomato + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,798 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Soup bone
Simmers slowly in water to release flavour and body into the broth.
Potato
Thickens the broth slightly as it softens and breaks down during cooking.
Onion
Adds sweetness and savory aroma as it cooks into the broth.
Tomato
Adds acidity and moisture, brightening the flavour of the broth.

The step that matters

Boil the broth steadily until about an hour before dinner. A steady boil reduces the broth and concentrates its flavour, while the vegetables added later need time to cook through and become tender without turning mushy.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, carrot, cabbage, turnip, potato. 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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