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Vegetable Soup

A hearty soup made with meat stock, assorted vegetables, optional grains, and optional milk or flour thickening.

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

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Simmer 3 pounds of meat and bone in 3 quarts of water for 1 hour to make stock.

Add vegetables and simmer

  1. Add the chopped carrot, turnip, onion, tomato, potato, celery, and parsley to the stock.

  2. If desired, add a little rice or barley.

  3. Boil the mixture for 30 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in browned flour to thicken, if desired.

  2. Pour in 1 cup of rich milk or cream just before serving, if preferred.

  3. If you don't want to eat the vegetables, strain the soup through a sieve and reheat.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  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

Meat and bone
Simmered for an hour to build the flavour and body of the stock.
Browned flour
Thickens the soup as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Rich milk or cream
Adds richness and a smoother, creamier mouthfeel when stirred in.
Potato
Softens as it cooks, adding body and thickening the soup slightly.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, carrot, turnip, onion, potato, celery, 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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