Name: Clear Vegetable Soup
Ingredients: prepared stock; 3 or 4 potatoes, sliced; 1 turnip, diced; 1 onion, shredded; some cabbage, shredded; a few tomatoes, chopped; 1 carrot, sliced; salt and pepper to taste

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 ↓

Clear Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soup

Heat the prepared stock in a pot on the stove.
Cook the sliced potatoes, turnip, shredded onion, shredded cabbage, chopped tomatoes, and sliced carrot in minimal water until tender.
Transfer the cooked vegetables into the boiling stock and cook for an additional 20 minutes.

Finish and serve

Season with salt and pepper, then strain the soup through a colander into a tureen.
Pick out a few slices of carrot and add them to the tureen.

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.

Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Turnip + cabbagetop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together897 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,107 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Potato + tomatotop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,798 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 partly during cooking to give the soup body, while the slices hold their shape.
Tomatoes: Add acidity and a fresh, savoury flavour to the broth.
Onion: Adds aromatic sweetness and depth as it softens in the stock.
Carrot: Contributes natural sweetness and colour to the broth.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, turnip, onion, cabbage, carrot, pepper):

Leekfits better
Parsnipfits better
Broccolifits better
Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, turnip, onion, cabbage, carrot, pepper. 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.