Skip to main content
Main

Vegetable Soup

A simple soup made with stock, hard and easy vegetables, tomatoes, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Vegetable Soup

Why it works: Carrot and celery 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 ↓

Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Skim off most of the fat from the stock.

  2. Boil the hard vegetables in 1 cup of water for 1 hour, then drain.

Make the soup

  1. Add the boiled hard vegetables to the stock.

  2. Add the easy-cooking vegetables and simmer for 30 minutes.

  3. Finally, stir in the tomatoes and salt.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Turnip + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together286 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 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

Stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the whole soup.
Hard vegetables
Carrots, turnips, onions and celery hold their shape and add body after long boiling.
Easy-cooking vegetables
Cauliflower and potatoes soften in the simmer and thicken the broth slightly.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and a fresh, savoury flavour to the broth.

The step that matters

Boiling the hard vegetables for 1 hour. Dense vegetables like carrots and turnips need a long boil to become tender. Adding them too early or cutting the pieces unevenly leaves some hard and others mushy, so the vegetables should be cooked separately and drained before they join the stock.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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

More vegetable soup recipes

Spring 46Beef 45Winter 31French 11Lentil 9Clear 8 See all 425 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesPotato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipes