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Vegetable Soup

A simple vegetable soup made with carrots, turnip, celery, potato, onion, butter, flour, parsley, and water.

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

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook the vegetables

  1. Cut the carrot, turnip, and celery into small pieces.

  2. In a pot, melt 3 tablespoons of butter and cook the chopped vegetables for 10 minutes.

  3. Add the diced potato and cook for 2 more minutes.

  4. Add the chopped onion and water, then cook for 1 hour.

Thicken and finish

  1. In a small bowl, mix 1 tablespoon of butter with the flour and add enough soup liquid to make it pour easily.

  2. Stir this mixture into the soup along with the salt and cook for an additional hour.

  3. Beat the soup with a fork to break up the vegetables, then stir in the parsley and serve hot.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

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

Butter
Adds richness and carries the vegetables' flavor as they cook in the pot.
Flour
Thickens the soup liquid so it has a fuller body.
Potato
Breaks down partly as it cooks, adding body and starch to the soup.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and color as it softens in the soup.

The step that matters

Adding the flour mixture. Flour clumps if added dry or too thick. Mixing it with butter and some hot soup liquid first lets it disperse evenly so the soup thickens smoothly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, celery, potato, butter, flour, parsley):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, celery, potato, butter, flour, parsley. 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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