Name: Good Vegetable Soup
Ingredients: ½ cup barley; 2 carrots, cut in fancy shapes or diced; 1 onion, diced; 1 cup celery, diced; 1 can tomatoes, cut in tiny pieces; 1 quart vegetable stock or water; ¼ teaspoon Kitchen Bouquet (optional); coarse sea salt (to taste); black pepper (to taste)

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 ↓

Good Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the barley

Soak the barley for 2 hours.
Simmer the barley in a stew pan for 1 hour.

Prepare the vegetables

Prepare the vegetables.
Cook the vegetables in boiling water until tender.

Make the soup

Add the stock to the barley and heat through.
Stir in the cooked vegetables and tomatoes.
Simmer for 10-15 minutes.
Serve hot, adding Kitchen Bouquet for color if desired.

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.

Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,173 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Celery + tomatotop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,377 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together16,012 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,555 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Barley + carrottop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together784 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Barley: Swells during soaking and simmering, giving the soup body and a chewy, hearty texture.
Carrots: Hold their shape and add natural sweetness as they cook until tender.
Celery: Stays slightly firm while cooking, adding crunch and a savory, aromatic flavor.
Tomatoes: Add acidity and moisture, and their juices help build the soup's flavor.

The step that matters

Simmer the barley before adding the vegetables. Barley needs a long simmer to become tender, while vegetables cook faster. Adding everything together can leave the barley firm or the vegetables overcooked and mushy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (barley, carrot, celery, tomato, pepper):

Capsicumfits better
Turnipfits better
Parsnipfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, carrot, celery, tomato, pepper. 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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Good Vegetable Soup