Name: Vegetable Soup
Ingredients: 2 turnips, chopped finely; 2 carrots, chopped finely; 4 potatoes, chopped finely; 1 onion, chopped finely; a little celery or parsley, chopped finely; 3 quarts of water; 1 tablespoon butter; ½ cup cracker crumbs

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

Chop the turnips, carrots, potatoes, onion, and celery or parsley finely.

Make the soup

Boil the chopped vegetables in 3 quarts of water for 3 hours.
Strain the mixture through a coarse sieve and return the liquid to the pot.
Add the butter and cracker crumbs to the strained liquid.
Bring to a boil again and serve immediately.

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.

Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,173 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,418 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,107 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Potatoes: Break down during long simmering to give the soup body and a thicker texture.
Cracker crumbs: Absorb liquid and thicken the broth slightly as they soften.
Butter: Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the finished broth.

Swap the onion

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

Leekfits better
Parsnipfits better
Beetrootfits about as well
Onionthe original

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