Skip to main content
Soup

Vegetable Soup

A hearty soup made with beef, veal, mutton bones, ham, carrots, turnips, onions, herbs, butter, flour, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
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 stock

  1. Combine the beef, veal, mutton bones, herbs, and water in a large pot.

  2. Cook slowly for 5 hours.

  3. Strain the soup, reserving about 5 quarts of liquid.

  4. Season the meat and bones, and return them to the pot with 3 quarts of the reserved stock for future use.

Cook the vegetables

  1. Melt the butter in a frying pan and add the sliced carrots, turnips, and onions.

  2. Fry until lightly browned.

  3. Add 1 pint of the skimmed stock to the vegetables.

  4. Stew until tender.

  5. Stir in the flour mixed with a little water.

  6. Add this mixture to the cooled stock in the soup kettle.

Finish and serve

  1. Season with sugar, cayenne, and salt.

  2. Boil for 5 minutes.

  3. Rub the soup through a colander and then a soup sieve.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  5. Beef + muttontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Coarse lean beef
Releases flavour and gelatin into the stock during the long slow cook.
Knuckle of veal
Adds body and gelatin to the stock, giving it a richer mouthfeel.
Mutton bones
Contribute savoury depth and body to the stock as they simmer.
Carrots, turnips, and onions
Provide sweetness and vegetable body that softens into the finished soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it is stirred into the hot stock.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and browns the vegetables for flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the flour mixture to the stock. Flour mixed with water must be stirred in smoothly and the soup kept from lumping. Stirring it into a cooled stock before boiling lets starch hydrate evenly and thicken without clumps.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, veal, mutton, ham, carrot, onion, butter):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Turnipthe original
  4. Tomatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, veal, mutton, ham, carrot, onion, butter. 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.

You might also like

Indian Spiced Potato Soup with Tofu and SpinachIndian Spiced Potato Soup with Tofu and Spinach448 recipesClear Carrot and Bottle Gourd SoupClear Carrot and Bottle Gourd Soup65 recipesMock Bisque SoupMock Bisque Soup51 recipesCream of Asparagus SoupCream of Asparagus Soup42 recipes