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Soup

Soup Bouquet

A soup made by tying carrot, onion, parsley, celery, and turnip together and cooking them together.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Soup Bouquet

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Tie the carrot, onion, parsley, celery, and turnip in a thin piece of cloth.

  2. Cook the bundle in soup until the soup is sufficiently seasoned.

  3. Remove the bundle from the soup without straining it.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Carrot
Releases sweetness and aroma into the broth as it simmers.
Onion
Adds savory depth and aroma to the broth as it simmers.
Parsley
Contributes a fresh, herbal aroma to the broth.
Celery
Adds a savory, aromatic background flavor to the broth.
Turnip
Contributes mild sweetness and body to the broth as it cooks.

The step that matters

Remove the bundle from the soup without straining it.. Flavor keeps extracting while the bundle sits in hot liquid, so removing it at the right moment sets the final taste. Lifting it out whole keeps torn vegetable pieces from clouding the soup and making it gritty.

Swap the onion

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

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

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