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Vegetable and Rice Soup

A soup of turnips, carrots, parsnips, potatoes, and rice simmered in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and parsnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 590 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Vegetable and Rice Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the turnips, carrots, parsnips, and potatoes finely.

Cook

  1. Combine the turnips, carrots, parsnips, and 1 quart of boiling water in a pan.

  2. Add the rice.

  3. Boil for 1 hour.

  4. Add the potatoes.

  5. Add 2 quarts of water.

  6. Continue boiling until all vegetables are well done.

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. Turnip + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together590 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Parsnip + potatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together353 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

Turnips
Provide the bulk of the soup's body and mild, earthy flavor as they soften.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and color while softening into the broth.
Potatoes
Break down slightly during long boiling, adding body and thickening the soup.
Rice
Releases starch as it cooks, helping to thicken the broth.

The step that matters

Add the potatoes after the first hour of boiling. Potatoes and rice would be overcooked if added too early in a long boil. Adding them after the hard root vegetables have softened helps everything finish together.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, carrot, parsnip, rice):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, carrot, parsnip, rice. 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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