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Oberlin Soup

A vegetable soup with onions, turnips, carrots, cabbage, tomatoes, herbs, butter, corn starch, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Oberlin Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Combine onions, turnips, carrots, and cold water in a large pot.

  2. Bring to a simmer and cook for one hour.

  3. Add the parboiled cabbage and cook for an additional 10 minutes.

  4. Stir in the sliced tomatoes and herbs and simmer for another 30 minutes.

  5. Pass the mixture through a colander back into the pot.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the butter and corn starch over low heat and cook for five minutes.

  2. Season with pepper, sugar, and salt to taste.

  3. Cover the soup and let it sit for five minutes off the heat.

  4. Stir in the boiling milk just 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.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + cabbagetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 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. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 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

Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Corn-starch
Thickens the liquid slightly so the soup feels smoother and less watery.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mellows the vegetable flavours when stirred in at the end.
Tomatoes
Contribute acidity and body, giving the soup its tangy flavour and colour.
Turnips
Form the starchy vegetable base that gives the soup substance as it cooks down.

The step that matters

Stirring in the corn starch and butter over low heat. Corn starch thickens only when heated, and it can clump if added to hot liquid without being stirred well. Keeping the heat low and stirring constantly lets the starch disperse evenly and thicken smoothly rather than forming lumps.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, turnip, carrot, cabbage, butter, corn, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, turnip, carrot, cabbage, butter, corn, pepper. 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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