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Vegetable Soup

A hearty soup of stock, carrots, turnips, potatoes, tomatoes, celery, cabbage, rice or barley, seasoned with pepper and sea salt.

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

Make the soup

  1. Heat the stock and boiling water in a large pot.

  2. Chop the vegetables and add them along with the rice.

  3. Boil for a few minutes until the vegetables are tender.

  4. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt to taste.

  5. Strain the soup if desired.

Make and serve the croutons

  1. Toast slices of stale bread to make croutons.

  2. Cut the toast into small pieces.

  3. Melt a small piece of butter in a pan.

  4. Add the toast pieces to the pan and brown them.

  5. Serve the soup with croutons.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + cabbagetop 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. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Stock
Provides the liquid base and most of the savory flavor of the soup.
Rice or barley
Releases starch as it cooks, thickening the broth and adding body.
Potatoes
Break down slightly as they cook, adding body and starch to the broth.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and color as they soften in the simmering liquid.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, potato, tomato, rice, celery, 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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