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Vegetable Soup

A broth made with water, beef, bones, onions, turnips, tomatoes, carrots, cabbage, and seasoned with salt, pepper, and thyme.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Vegetable Soup

Why it works: Turnip and carrot 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 ↓

Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a large pot, combine water, beef, and bones.

  2. Add onions, turnips, tomatoes, carrots, and cabbage.

  3. Boil until all vegetables are tender.

  4. Remove bones and meat from the pot.

  5. Season the soup with salt, pepper, and thyme.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + cabbagetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Turnip + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,352 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef and bones
Release flavor and body into the broth as they simmer.
Onions
Add sweetness and aromatic depth to the broth as they cook down.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body while softening during the boil.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and savory depth to the broth.
Turnips
Soften during the boil and add mild sweetness to the soup.

The step that matters

Boil until all vegetables are tender. Vegetables of different densities soften at different rates. Cooking until every piece is tender, not just the quick ones, keeps texture even and lets the starches and sugars release into the broth.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, turnip, tomato, carrot, pepper, thyme. 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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