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Vegetable Soup

A soup made from turnips, carrots, cabbage, spinach, celery, parsley, onion, mint, herbs, oil, water, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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

Prepare

  1. Collect seasonal vegetables and cut them fine.

Cook the soup

  1. Heat oil in a stewpan and add the vegetables.

  2. Stew gently until the vegetables are tender.

  3. Add 2 quarts of boiling water and stew for 15 minutes.

  4. Season with salt and pepper 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 + 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. Turnip + carrottop 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 + spinachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together320 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

Turnips
Adds body and a mild sweetness as they soften during stewing.
Carrots
Contribute sweetness and color while softening into the broth.
Cabbage
Adds bulk and a mild sulfurous sweetness when stewed slowly.
Onion
Builds savory depth as its sugars soften and flavor the stock.
Celery
Contributes aroma and a fresh, savory backbone to the broth.

The step that matters

Stew gently until the vegetables are tender. Gentle heat softens cell walls evenly without breaking the vegetables apart or making the broth cloudy and bitter. Cutting the pieces fine helps them cook through at the same rate.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, carrot, cabbage, spinach, celery, parsley, 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.

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