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Graham Soup

A vegetable soup made with onions, carrots, turnips, cabbage, celery, tomatoes, butter, milk, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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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 ↓

Graham Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Combine chopped onions, carrots, turnips, celery, and water in a large pot. Bring to a boil.

  2. Parboil chopped cabbage separately.

  3. After 30 minutes, add the cabbage to the pot.

  4. After another 30 minutes, add tomatoes and chopped sweet herbs.

  5. Boil for 20 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in sugar, pepper, and salt to taste.

  2. Strain the soup through a colander.

  3. Return the strained soup to the pot.

  4. Stir in the floured butter.

  5. Simmer for 5 minutes.

  6. Stir in hot milk or cream before serving.

  7. Serve in a tureen.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + cabbagetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 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. Celery + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 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

Butter
Floured butter thickens the strained soup and adds richness and body.
Tomatoes
Adds acidity and color, balancing the sweetness of the vegetables.
Milk or cream
Adds richness and a mellow, creamy finish to the soup.
Carrots
Adds sweetness and body as they soften in the simmering broth.

The step that matters

Stir in the floured butter. Flour mixed into butter must be stirred in and simmered so it disperses evenly; added to a hot liquid it can clump if not whisked, leaving lumps and uneven thickening.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, carrot, turnip, cabbage, celery, butter, flour. 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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