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Vegetable Soups

A hearty soup made with beef, peas, and rice flour thickener.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Vegetable Soups

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Boil the empty pods of the peas in the water for 1 hour.

  2. Strain out the pods and add the beef.

  3. Boil slowly for 1.5 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Half an hour before serving, add the shelled peas.

  2. Twenty minutes later, stir in the rice flour, salt, pepper, and parsley.

  3. Stir frequently to prevent scorching.

  4. Strain into a hot tureen.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Peas + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,434 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  4. Beef + ricetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,265 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Rice + parsleytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,762 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the meat and rich savoury flavour of the soup as it simmers.
Green peas
Add sweetness, body and the main vegetable flavour of the soup.
Rice flour
Thickens the soup as it is stirred in, giving it a fuller texture.

The step that matters

Stir in the rice flour and stir frequently. Rice flour thickens as it heats and can settle and burn on the bottom of the pot. Stirring often keeps it dispersed and prevents scorching, which would give the soup a bitter, burnt taste.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, rice, flour, pepper, parsley):

  1. Black-eyed peafits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, rice, flour, pepper, parsley. 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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