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Vegetable Soup

A hearty soup of onions, turnips, carrot, potatoes, butter, ham, herbs, and flour.

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

Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a pot, combine the chopped onions, turnips, carrot, and potatoes.

  2. Add the butter, ham (or meat scraps), and mixed herbs.

  3. Place over medium heat for 10 minutes.

Make the soup

  1. Mix the flour in 2 quarts of water and add to the pot.

  2. Stir in the Extract of Beef, salt, and pepper.

  3. Boil until the vegetables are well cooked.

Serve

  1. Skim the surface and serve 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.

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 + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Break down while cooking to thicken the soup and add body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour through the soup.
Flour
Thickens the broth as it cooks, giving it a fuller texture.
Ham
Releases savoury meat flavour into the water as it simmers.
Onions
Build sweetness and aroma as they soften in the pot.

The step that matters

Mix the flour into the water before adding it to the pot. Flour added directly to hot liquid or dry can clump into lumps that do not dissolve. Blending it smoothly into cold water first lets it disperse evenly so it thickens the broth uniformly.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, carrot, potato, butter, ham, flour, beef):

  1. Leekfits about as well
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Turnipthe original
  4. Okrafits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, carrot, potato, butter, ham, flour, beef. 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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