Name: White Soup
Ingredients: stock; 1-2 carrots; 1-2 turnips; 1 onion; ¼ cup rice or vermicelli; ¼ cup water; a pinch of mace; a pinch of pepper; ¼ teaspoon salt

Why it works: Carrot and turnip 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 ↓

White Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Pour the stock into a saucepan.
Add the carrots, turnips, onion, rice or vermicelli, and water.
Season with mace, pepper, and salt.
Boil for one hour.
Remove the vegetables and serve with the rice or vermicelli.

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.

Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,585 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,555 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together21,601 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Carrot + ricetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,477 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice or vermicelli: Thickens the soup slightly as it cooks and gives body to the broth.
Carrots: Add natural sweetness and body to the broth as they soften.
Turnips: Add earthy flavour and body to the broth as they soften.
Onion: Adds savoury depth and aroma to the stock as it cooks.

Swap the mace

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

Celeryfits better
Parsleyfits better
Turmericfits better
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, onion, rice, 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.