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Vegetable Soup

A hearty soup made with turnip, carrot, onion, celery, butter, flour, and water.

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

Make the vegetable base

  1. Combine turnip, carrot, onions, celery, and 2 quarts of water in a pot.

  2. Boil until all vegetables are tender and water is nearly absorbed.

  3. Rub the mixture through a sieve into a clean pot.

Finish the soup

  1. Add the remaining 3 pints of water and bring to a boil.

  2. Soften the butter with a little hot soup, then mix with flour, salt, and pepper until smooth.

  3. Stir the butter mixture into the boiling soup and cook for 2-3 minutes 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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Turnip
Provides the main body and mild sweetness of the soup as it cooks down.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and body, thickening the soup when puréed through a sieve.
Onions
Builds savory depth and aroma as the vegetables soften in the water.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup when mixed with butter and stirred into the boiling liquid.

The step that matters

Stirring the butter and flour mixture into the boiling soup. Flour clumps if it hits hot liquid unblended. Softening the butter and mixing it smooth first lets the starch disperse evenly, and the brief simmer lets the starch swell and thicken the soup without a raw floury taste.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, carrot, celery, flour, butter, pepper, parsley. 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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