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Puree of Vegetable Soup

A thickened vegetable soup made with carrots, turnips, onions, ham or bacon, potatoes, parsley, milk, and stock, then pureed and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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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 ↓

Puree of Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. In a pot, fry the carrots, turnips, onions, and ham or bacon until slightly softened.

  2. Mix the flour with a little water to form a smooth paste and add it to the pot.

  3. Pour in the stock or broth, add the parsley and potatoes, and then the milk.

  4. Bring to a boil and cook for 20 minutes.

Strain and serve

  1. Season with salt, pepper, and sugar, then strain the soup through a fine sieve, discarding the parsley and ham.

  2. Return the strained soup to the pot, bring it back to a boil, skim off any foam, and serve hot with toasted bread.

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

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

  2. Carrot + turniptop 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

Carrots
Provide sweetness and body, and thicken the soup when pureed.
Turnips
Add earthy flavour and body to the pureed base.
Potatoes
Add starch that gives the soup a thicker, smoother texture.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a lightly bodied soup.
Milk
Adds richness and a softer, creamier mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Strain through a fine sieve. Straining removes the fibrous vegetable pulp and any lumps of flour paste, which is what gives the soup a smooth texture. Skipping or rushing this leaves the soup grainy.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, ham, flour, parsley, potato, milk. 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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