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Soup

Brown Soup

A vegetable soup made with turnips, carrots, celery, onions, peas, toasted bread, butter, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Brown Soup

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 ↓

Brown Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the vegetables

  1. In a pan, melt the butter and add the turnips, carrots, celery, and onions, stirring occasionally until browned.

Make the soup

  1. Boil the peas in enough boiling stock or water to make a total of 3 quarts.

  2. Add the toasted bread and season with black peppercorns, Jamaica pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  3. Gently boil the mixture for 3 to 4 hours.

  4. Rub the soup through a coarse sieve and return it to the pan.

  5. Bring the soup to a boil 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 + 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 + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 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
Provide the bulk of the soup and a mildly sweet, earthy flavour.
Carrots
Add sweetness and colour to the soup base.
Butter
Carries flavour and, when browned, adds a nutty richness to the vegetables.
Peas
Thicken the soup and give it body as they break down during boiling.
Toasted bread
Thickens the soup and adds a toasted, roasted flavour.

The step that matters

Rub the soup through a coarse sieve. Pressing the cooked vegetables, peas and bread through the sieve breaks them down and gives the soup its smooth, thick body. Skipping or rushing this leaves the soup lumpy and thin.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, carrot, celery, onion, butter, bread, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, carrot, celery, onion, butter, bread, 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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