Skip to main content
Main

A Good Vegetable Soup

A hearty vegetable soup made with root vegetables, canned beans, and a butter‑flour roux.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

A Good Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Combine the carrot, salsify, turnip, and cabbage in a pot.

  2. Cover with salted boiling water.

  3. Bring to a boil.

  4. Add the beans and peas.

  5. Cook slowly for 30 minutes.

  6. Drain the vegetables.

  7. Set aside.

Make the soup

  1. Fry the sliced onion in butter until light brown.

  2. Stir in the other vegetables.

  3. Cover with cold water or soup stock.

  4. Simmer for 1 hour.

  5. Add parsley, celery, salt, and pepper to taste.

  6. Rub butter into brown flour. Stir into the soup.

  7. Cook, stirring steadily, until smooth and thick.

  8. 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.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + cabbagetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Butter
Adds richness and flavour when fried with the onion, and enriches the finished soup.
Brown flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks, giving it body and a smooth texture.
Potatoes
Soften during cooking and add starch that helps thicken the soup.
Canned tomatoes
Add acidity and colour, with body from the sieved pulp.
Onion
Browned in butter, it builds sweetness and savoury depth in the base.

The step that matters

Stirring the brown flour into the soup. Flour added to hot liquid can clump into lumps. Rubbing it into butter first and stirring steadily lets it disperse evenly, so the soup thickens smooth rather than lumpy.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Peasthe original

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

More vegetable soup recipes

Spring 46Beef 45Winter 31French 11Lentil 9Clear 8 See all 425 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesPotato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesGreen PeasGreen Peas229 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipes