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Vegetable Soup

A hearty soup of diced root vegetables, onions, celery, and rice simmered in water with butter and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Vegetable Soup

Why it works: Turnip and parsnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 590 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dice the vegetables and place all except the onions in a soup kettle.

  2. Add the seasonings and cold water.

  3. Bring slowly to a boil and cook gently for 1.25 hours.

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan, add the onion, and cook until slightly transparent, but do not let it brown.

  2. Add the onion to the vegetables in the kettle.

  3. Add the rice after the soup has cooked for 45 minutes.

  4. Serve with toasted bread.

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. Turnip + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together590 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Sweet potato + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together95 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Carrot
Adds sweetness and body as it softens during the long simmer.
Sweet potato
Breaks down while cooking, thickening the broth and adding sweetness.
Irish potatoes
Starch softens and thickens the broth, giving the soup body.
Cooked rice
Adds starch that thickens the soup slightly as it cooks.
Butter
Carries onion flavor and adds richness to the soup base.

The step that matters

Cooking the onion in butter. Onion cooked over heat until only slightly transparent keeps a mild, sweet flavor. Browning it would make the soup taste bitter and darker than intended.

Swap the sweet potato

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Sweet potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, parsnip, potato, onion, celery, butter. 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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