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Parsnip Soup with Stock

A hearty soup made from parsnips, onions, celery, and stock, seasoned with salt, pepper, and optional cayenne, tomato, or chili vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsnip and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 561 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Parsnip Soup with Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a stew-pan, combine the sliced parsnips, onions, celery, and stock.

  2. Stew the vegetables until tender, about 2 hours.

  3. Drain the vegetables and press them through a coarse sieve.

  4. Return the puree to the soup and let it boil.

Season and serve

  1. Season with salt, pepper, or cayenne to taste.

  2. Serve very hot, adding boiling milk if desired.

  3. To balance the sweetness, add a little tomato or 1 tablespoon of chili vinegar if liked.

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. Parsnip + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together561 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Celery + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 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

Parsnips
Provide the main body, sweetness and thick texture of the soup once pureed.
Onions
Add savoury depth and aroma as they soften during the long stew.
Celery
Adds a fresh, aromatic background flavour to the stewed vegetables.
Stock
Provides the liquid that cooks the vegetables and forms the soup base.

The step that matters

Stewing until tender. The vegetables must be fully soft so they press through the sieve into a smooth puree. Undercooked parsnips stay grainy and clog the sieve, and the soup will taste less sweet and mellow.

Swap the tomato

The recipe marks tomato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsnip, onion, celery, pepper, milk, vinegar):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsnip, onion, celery, pepper, milk, vinegar. 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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