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Vegetable Soup

Soup made with beef shank stock and vegetables including potatoes, cabbage, tomatoes, corn, carrots, turnip, onion, parsley, thyme, garlic, and pepper, sweetened with brown sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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

Prepare the stock

  1. Wash the beef shank in several waters.

  2. Break the bone and place it in a large kettle with cold water.

  3. Boil steadily for about 2 hours, skimming off impurities as they rise.

  4. Strain the stock before adding vegetables.

Make the soup

  1. Add equal quantities of potatoes, cabbage, tomatoes, grated corn, onion, carrots, turnip, parsley, thyme, garlic (if using), and pepper pod.

  2. Stir in brown sugar and black pepper.

  3. Boil for 1 hour.

  4. Thicken with a mixture of milk and flour before serving.

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. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  4. Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

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

  5. Potato + corntop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together938 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef shank
Gives the stock its meaty flavour and body as it simmers with the bone.
Potatoes
Break down slightly as they cook, adding body and thickening the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup with milk when it is stirred in before serving.
Milk
Adds richness and creaminess to the thickened broth.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that rounds out the savoury stock and vegetables.
Turnip
Adds earthy sweetness and firmness that holds shape during the hour-long boil.

The step that matters

Thicken with milk and flour before serving. Flour stirred into cold liquid clumps, so it should be mixed smoothly with the milk first and then stirred into the simmering soup, which lets the starch thicken evenly.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Okrafits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, potato, tomato, corn, onion, carrot, 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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