Skip to main content
Main

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
Jump to recipe ↓

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, 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. Add 1 quart of boiling water to the soup.

Make and add the dumplings

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

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

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

  4. Boil for 30 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Five minutes before serving, add parsley, peanut butter, peanutta, 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 bulk of the dumplings, giving them structure as they cook in the broth.
Egg
Binds the dumpling mixture together so the balls hold their shape in the soup.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking so the dumplings rise and turn lighter in texture.
Nut butter or oil
Adds fat that tenderizes the dumpling dough and carries flavor.
Barley
Thickens the soup as its starch releases during the long simmer.
Sweet potato
Breaks down slightly during simmering, adding body and natural sweetness to the broth.

The step that matters

Drop the dumplings into gently boiling soup. Baking powder needs heat to release gas, so the dumplings must cook in simmering liquid to rise and set; adding them too early or letting the soup stall can leave them dense.

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.

You might also like

Sweet Potato CroquettesSweet Potato Croquettes53 recipesPotato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesCorn FrittersCorn Fritters203 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipes