Skip to main content
Main

Cottage Soup

A hearty soup made from bones, vegetables, grains, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Celery and carrot 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 ↓

Cottage Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Place the bones in a large stewpan with salt, herbs, celery seed or sticks, and cold water.

  2. Bring to a boil.

  3. Skim the surface.

  4. Reduce heat and simmer gently for 3-4 hours.

  5. Strain the liquid.

  6. Reserve the fat.

Build the soup

  1. Heat the fat in a frying pan.

  2. Sauté the onions, carrot, and turnip until lightly browned.

  3. Add the sautéed vegetables to the soup.

  4. Bring to a boil.

  5. Stir in the sugar and pepper.

  6. Mix the oatmeal or barley with a little cold water until smooth. Add to the soup.

  7. Wash the rice. Add it to the soup.

  8. Cook until tender.

  9. Serve with powdered mint on the side.

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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + barleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Barley + ricetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together568 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

Bones
Release gelatin and flavour into the water during long simmering, giving the broth body.
Onions
Browning in the fat adds sweetness and savoury depth to the soup.
Oatmeal or barley
Mixed smooth with cold water first, it thickens the soup as it cooks.
Rice
Softens as it cooks in the broth, adding body and bulk to the soup.

The step that matters

Skim the surface. Skimming foam as the water first heats removes impurities that would otherwise cloud the broth and taint its flavour.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, carrot, turnip, sugar, pepper, barley, rice. 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.

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesRice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipesSteamed RiceSteamed Rice48 recipes