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Grain-vegetable Soup

A hearty soup made with rice, corn, barley, vegetables, and a flour-based dumpling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Grain-vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Combine rice, chopped green corn, and cracked barley with 1 quart of water in a soup pot.

  2. Boil for 1 hour.

  3. Add chopped celery, onion, turnip, carrot, and sweet potato to the pot along with another quart of water.

  4. Boil for 2 hours over low heat.

  5. After 2 hours, add 1 quart of boiling water.

Make the dumplings

  1. In a bowl, mix flour and baking powder.

  2. Rub in nut butter or oil and the beaten egg until combined.

  3. Roll the mixture into small balls and drop them into the soup.

  4. Boil for 30 minutes.

Finish the soup

  1. About 5 minutes before serving, add parsley, peanut butter, peanuts, thyme, and salt.

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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Barley + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + sweet potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together71 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the body of the dumplings, giving them structure once cooked.
Egg
Binds the dumpling mixture so the balls hold together in the soup.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking so the dumplings rise and become lighter.
Barley
Thickens the broth and adds a chewy texture as it cooks slowly.
Sweet potato
Breaks down slightly as it simmers, adding body and natural sweetness to the broth.
Peanut butter
Adds richness and fat, rounding out the broth with a nutty flavour.

The step that matters

Dropping the dumplings into the soup. Baking powder starts releasing gas as soon as it is moist and heated, so the dumpling mixture should be shaped and dropped in promptly. Keeping the soup at a steady boil while they cook helps them puff and cook through rather than turning dense or sinking.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, corn, barley, celery, turnip, carrot, sweet potato):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, corn, barley, celery, turnip, carrot, sweet potato. 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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