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Winter Vegetable Soup

A hearty soup made with turnips, carrots, onions, celery, leeks, garlic, parsley, cloves, and water, simmered for three hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Winter Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a pot and fry the turnips, carrots, and onions until light yellow.

  2. Add the celery and leeks, stir, and fry for 6 minutes.

  3. Add the garlic, parsley, cloves, salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  4. Cover with water and simmer for 3 hours, skimming off any scum.

Serve

  1. Strain the soup and serve. Optionally add croutons, vermicelli, Italian pasta, or rice.

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. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 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 soup's base flavour and body as they soften during the long simmer.
Carrots
Add sweetness and colour to the soup as they cook down.
Onions
Build savoury depth when fried gently in butter before the water goes in.
Butter
Carries fat for frying the vegetables, adding richness and helping them brown lightly.
Leeks
Contribute a mild onion-like sweetness and softness to the broth.
Celery
Adds savoury, aromatic flavour to the broth as it simmers.

The step that matters

Frying the turnips, carrots, and onions until light yellow. Frying in butter first softens the vegetables and develops mild savoury flavour. Browning too far can turn the soup bitter, while skipping this step leaves a flatter taste.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, carrot, onion, butter, celery, leek, garlic. 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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