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Vegetable Soup

A hearty soup made with beef shank, beans, corn, turnip, cabbage, potatoes, onions, and tomatoes, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Vegetable Soup

Why it works: Turnip and cabbage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 897 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Wash the beef shank in several changes of water and break the bone.

Make the soup

  1. Place the shank in a large pot with cold water and boil steadily for one hour.

  2. Add the butter beans, corn, turnip, cabbage, Irish potatoes, and onions.

  3. Add the tomatoes one hour before serving.

  4. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

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. Turnip + cabbagetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Beans + corntop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,211 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Beans + turniptop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together400 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Corn + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together938 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef shank
Gives the broth its meaty flavour and body as it simmers for an hour.
Butter beans
Add starch and a creamy texture that thickens the soup slightly.
Irish potatoes
Release starch as they cook, adding body and soaking up flavour.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and a fresh, bright flavour to the broth.
Onions
Build a sweet, savoury base as they soften in the broth.

The step that matters

Add the tomatoes one hour before serving. Adding tomatoes late keeps their acidity and fresh flavour from breaking down too far, while the beef has time to become tender in the simmering broth first.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, butter, beans, corn, turnip, potato, onion):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, beans, corn, turnip, potato, onion. 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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