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Parsnip Soup

A vegetable soup made from parsnips, onions, celery, and stock, seasoned with salt, pepper, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsnip and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 561 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Parsnip Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a stewpan, combine the parsnips, onions, celery, and stock.

  2. Stew the vegetables until tender, about 2 hours.

  3. Remove the vegetables and press them through a coarse sieve.

  4. Return the puree to the soup and let it boil.

  5. Season with salt, pepper, and cayenne to taste.

Finish and serve

  1. Serve very hot, adding boiling milk if desired.

  2. To reduce sweetness, add a little tomato or chili vinegar.

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. Parsnip + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together561 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Celery + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 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

Parsnips
Provide the main body, sweetness and thick texture once pureed.
Onions
Add savory depth and aroma to the stock as they soften.
Celery
Adds a vegetal aroma that rounds out the flavor of the soup.
Light-colored stock
Supplies the liquid that carries the flavor and loosens the puree.
Milk
Adds richness and a smoother, creamier mouthfeel when added at serving.

The step that matters

Press the vegetables through a sieve. Pressing the cooked vegetables breaks down their cell walls so the puree becomes smooth and thick. Skipping or rushing this leaves the soup grainy and thin.

Swap the tomato

The recipe marks tomato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsnip, onion, celery, pepper, milk, vinegar):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsnip, onion, celery, pepper, milk, vinegar. 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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