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A White Vegetable Soup

A clear soup made with carrots, turnips, onions, celery, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery 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 ↓

A White Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Simmer the vegetables

  1. In a saucepan, combine water, carrots, turnips, onions, celery, salt, and mace.

  2. Boil for 1 hour.

Add stock and finish

  1. Add stock and boil together for an additional 45 minutes.

  2. Taste and adjust seasoning as needed.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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

Carrots
Soften during simmering and add natural sweetness and body to the broth.
Turnips
Break down slowly and add mild flavor and body to the soup.
Onions
Release sugars as they cook slowly, adding savory depth and sweetness.
Celery
Adds a fresh, aromatic background note to the broth.
Stock
Adds savory flavor and liquid that carries the taste of the vegetables.

The step that matters

Taste and adjust seasoning as needed.. Salt was added at the start, but the liquid reduces during the long simmer and the stock adds more flavor later. Concentration changes as the soup cooks, so tasting at the end prevents it from being too bland or too salty.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

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