Skip to main content
Main

Vegetable Soup

A hearty soup made with beef, veal, mutton bones, ham, carrots, turnips, onions, herbs, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Vegetable Soup

Why it works: Carrot and turnip 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 ↓

Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Combine the beef, veal, mutton bones, herbs, and water in a large pot. Cook slowly for 5 hours.

  2. Strain the soup, reserving 5 quarts of liquid.

  3. Season the meat and bones, then return them to the pot with 3 quarts of the reserved stock for future use.

Cook the vegetables

  1. In a frying pan, melt the butter and add the sliced carrots, turnips, and onions. Fry until lightly browned.

  2. Add 1 pint of the skimmed stock to the vegetables and stew until tender.

Thicken and finish

  1. Stir in the flour mixed with water, then combine with the cooled stock in the soup kettle.

  2. Season with sugar, cayenne, and salt. Boil for 5 minutes.

  3. Rub the mixture through a colander and then a soup sieve. Heat almost to boiling and 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.

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.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  5. Beef + muttontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the main meaty flavor and, through long simmering, a rich body to the broth.
Veal knuckle
Its connective tissue breaks down into gelatin, giving the stock a fuller, silkier texture.
Mutton bones
Cracked bones release marrow and collagen during slow cooking, adding depth and body to the stock.
Butter
Carries flavor and helps the vegetables brown lightly in the frying pan.
Flour
Starch thickens the liquid as it heats, giving the soup a fuller consistency.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and color, and soften into the soup during stewing.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour mixture. Flour must be mixed smoothly with water before it goes into the stock, because dry flour clumps. The starch thickens as the liquid heats, so the mixture should be stirred well and kept moving.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, veal, mutton, ham, carrot, onion, butter):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Turnipthe original
  4. Tomatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, veal, mutton, ham, carrot, onion, 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.

You might also like

Beef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipes