Skip to main content
Main

Parsnip Soup

A soup made from parsnips, celery, onions, stock, salt, pepper, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsnip and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 561 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Parsnip Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the parsnips, celery, and onions into pieces.

  2. Stew them in 2 quarts of stock until tender.

Finish the soup

  1. Remove the vegetables and pulp them through a coarse sieve.

  2. Pour the pulp back into the soup.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

  4. Before serving, stir in a little milk.

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. Parsnip + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together561 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Parsnip + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,054 recipes

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

  5. Parsnip + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,109 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

Parsnips
Provide the main body and sweet, earthy flavour of the soup.
Onions
Add savoury depth and aromatic sweetness as they soften in the stock.
Celery
Adds a fresh, herbal aroma that rounds out the vegetable flavour.
Milk
Adds richness and softens the flavour when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Pulping the vegetables through a coarse sieve. Pressing the cooked vegetables through the sieve breaks down their cell walls, which thickens the soup and gives it a smooth body. Vegetables that are not fully tender will not pulp easily and can leave a grainy texture.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsnip, celery, pepper, milk):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsnip, celery, pepper, milk. 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.

You might also like

Cream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipesCelery CroquettesCelery Croquettes16 recipesCelery Cream SoupCelery Cream Soup15 recipes