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Vegetable Soup

A hearty soup made with cabbage, onions, turnip, carrot, celery, potatoes, and stale bread, simmered in water with drippings, flour, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Vegetable Soup

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

  1. Pare, wash, and finely cut all vegetables.

  2. Soak the vegetables in cold water.

Make the soup

  1. Heat the drippings in a soup pot, then add the onions and cook slowly for 10 minutes.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook for an additional 10 minutes.

  3. Add the cold water and all vegetables except the potatoes, then simmer for 2 hours.

  4. Add the potatoes, salt, and pepper, and cook for 1 hour longer.

  5. Five minutes before serving, add the stale bread to the soup.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Cabbage + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Flour
Thickens the broth into a body-rich soup as it cooks with the drippings.
Drippings
Adds fat for cooking the onions and carries savory flavor through the soup.
Onions
Soften during slow cooking and release sweetness that rounds out the broth.
Potatoes
Break down partly during the final hour, adding body and starch to the soup.
Stale bread
Absorbs liquid and softens at the end, adding body to the soup.
Cabbage
Becomes tender over the long simmer, adding texture and mild sweetness.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour in the drippings. Cooking the flour briefly in fat before adding liquid coats the starch granules so they disperse without lumps and thicken smoothly. Skipping or rushing this stage can leave the soup lumpy or floury-tasting.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, turnip, carrot, celery, flour, pepper, potato. 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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