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Palestine Soup

A hearty soup of onions, turnips, carrots, potatoes, ham, and butter, thickened with flour and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Palestine Soup

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 ↓

Palestine Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soup

  1. Combine onions, turnips, carrots, potatoes, butter, ham, and parsley in a stew pan or soup pot.

  2. Cook over a brisk fire for 10 minutes.

  3. Add the flour and mix well.

  4. Pour in the meat stock and boiling milk, stirring until boiling.

  5. Season with pepper, salt, and sugar.

Finish and serve

  1. Rub the mixture through a sieve and return it to the pot.

  2. Allow it to boil once, skim well, and serve with a piece of fried bread on a napkin.

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

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

  2. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  5. 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

Onions
Build the flavour base and add body and sweetness as they soften.
Potatoes
Starch thickens the soup and gives it a smooth, full texture when sieved.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and carries flavour from the vegetables and ham.
Flour
Thickens the liquid so the soup holds body after the stock and milk are added.
Meat stock
Forms the savoury liquid base of the soup.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softens the flavour of the soup.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture through a sieve. Pushing the cooked vegetables and ham through a sieve breaks down their cell walls and releases starch, which gives the soup its smooth, thick texture. Skipping or rushing this leaves the soup grainy and thin.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, carrot, potato, butter, ham, parsley, 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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