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Variety Soup

A hearty soup made with cabbage, turnip, herbs, roast beef bones, ham, and optional beans or macaroni, thickened with corn starch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 897 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Variety Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop the cabbage, turnip, and sweet herbs.

  2. Cover the vegetables with cold water.

  3. Bring the water to a boil.

  4. Discard the first water.

Make the stock

  1. Add 1 quart of cold water.

  2. Add the roast beef bones and ham slices.

  3. Stew for 2 hours at the back of the stove.

Combine and serve

  1. Half an hour before serving, warm the leftover soup.

  2. Strain the hot liquid from the cabbage into the leftover soup.

  3. Remove bones and meat from the colander.

  4. Mash the vegetables minimally.

  5. Add the vegetables and any leftover macaroni or beans to the soup.

  6. Season to taste.

  7. Simmer for 10 minutes.

  8. Thicken with corn starch.

  9. Serve.

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. Cabbage + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Beans + corntop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,211 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Turnip + beanstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together400 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Cabbage + beanstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 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

Cabbage
Provides the main vegetable body and mild sweetness as it cooks down into the broth.
Turnip
Adds earthy flavour and body to the soup as it softens during cooking.
Roast beef bones
Release gelatin and savoury flavour into the water, giving the stock its richness.
Corn starch
Thickens the soup's liquid into a smoother, more substantial consistency when heated.

The step that matters

Thicken with corn starch. Corn starch must be heated in the liquid to swell and thicken it. Added to cold liquid it clumps, and undercooked starch leaves a raw, pasty taste.

“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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