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Vegetable Soup

A clear soup made with bone, barley, vegetables, and tomatoes, simmered for 1.5 hours.

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

Why it works: Parsley and carrot 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 ↓

Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the soup bone and check for small splinters.

  2. Put the bone in water, add salt, and bring to a boil.

  3. Skim the surface and add the barley.

  4. Tilt the cover and reduce the heat to low.

Simmer and finish

  1. Wash and dice the vegetables neatly.

  2. Rinse the vegetables in boiling water and then under the tap.

  3. Add the vegetables to the soup after it has simmered for one hour.

  4. Cut up the tomatoes and add them along with the sugar.

  5. Cook for an additional 30 minutes 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. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Barley + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Soup bone
Releases flavor and body into the water as it simmers, giving the broth its base.
Pearl barley
Thickens the broth slightly and adds a chewy, starchy texture as it cooks.
Soup vegetables
Contribute flavor, sweetness and texture to the broth as they simmer.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and fresh, savory flavor to the broth.

The step that matters

Add the vegetables after one hour of simmering. Adding vegetables after the bone has simmered for an hour lets the broth develop its base flavor first, so the vegetables cook through without turning mushy or losing their flavor to a long boil.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (barley, sugar, celery, parsley, onion, carrot, turnip):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, sugar, celery, parsley, onion, carrot, turnip. 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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