Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓
Vegetable Soup
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the beef
Wash the beef in cold water and break it into pieces to incorporate the marrow.
Place the beef in a soup pot with 6 quarts of water and boil slowly until the meat is tender and leaves the bone.
Remove the beef, chop it into small pieces, and return it to the pot.
Simmer and thicken
Add the corn, chopped tomatoes, thyme, parsley, and shallot.
Boil for 2 hours.
Half an hour before serving, thicken the soup with 2 tablespoons of flour mixed with ½ cup of water.
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.
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Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together9,057 recipes
Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
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Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together3,737 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
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Thyme + shallottop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together1,476 recipes
Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
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Tomato + thymetop 4% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,370 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
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Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together2,081 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Shin of beef
- Breaks down into tender meat and releases gelatin and marrow flavor into the broth during slow boiling.
- Corn
- Adds sweetness and body to the soup as it cooks.
- Ripe tomatoes
- Provide acidity and juiciness that build the broth's flavor.
- Flour
- Thickens the broth when mixed with water and stirred in near the end.
The step that matters
Thickening with flour and water. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps. Mixing it with cold water first makes a smooth slurry that thickens the soup evenly.
Swap the tomato
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, corn, thyme, parsley, shallot, flour):
- Chivefits better
- Parsnipfits better
- Leekfits better
- Tomatothe original
Fit is the average pairing score against beef, corn, thyme, parsley, shallot, 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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