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Soup

Vegetable Soup

A boiled vegetable soup with potatoes, tomatoes, onion, turnip, cabbage, barley, corn, butter, and sweet cream.

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 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 and cook

  1. Chop all vegetables finely.

  2. Boil in water for 40 minutes.

Season and finish

  1. Season with salt, pepper, and plenty of butter.

  2. Just before serving, add ½ cup of sweet cream.

  3. Optionally, use a soup bone or meat broth instead of butter.

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. Turnip + barleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Potato + corntop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together938 recipes

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

  5. 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 while boiling to thicken the soup and give it body.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and moisture that give the broth its flavor.
Onion
Adds savory aromatic depth as it softens in the broth.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor and rounds out the broth.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and smoothness when stirred in just before serving.

The step that matters

Adding the sweet cream. Cream added to a boiling soup can curdle or separate. Stirring it in just before serving, off the heat, keeps it smooth and evenly blended.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, onion, turnip, cabbage, barley, corn, 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.

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