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Parker House Soup

A hearty beef soup with carrots, turnip, beet, onions, tomatoes, and a butter‑flour roux.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 ↓

Parker House Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a large pot, combine beef stock, carrot, turnip, beet, onions, and tomatoes.

  2. Boil the mixture for 1 hour, then strain it.

Thicken and finish

  1. In a pan, heat the butter until light brown, then remove from heat; stir in the flour until well mixed, then add this mixture to the soup.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, and sugar.

  3. Return the soup to the heat and stir until it boils for 5 minutes, skimming the surface as needed.

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 + 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 + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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
Browned with the flour, it adds a nutty aroma and fat richness to the soup.
Flour
Mixed with the browned butter to form a roux that thickens the soup.
Tomatoes
Provide acidity and body to the soup base.
Beef stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the vegetable flavors.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the tomatoes with a touch of sweetness.

The step that matters

Adding the browned flour and butter. Stirring the flour into the hot butter cooks out raw starch taste and forms a roux. Adding it without thorough mixing or while the soup is too cold can leave lumps and a floury flavor, so the mixture should be stirred in smoothly and the soup kept boiling afterward to thicken fully.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, onion, butter, flour, 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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