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Soup

Winter Vegetable Soup

A hearty soup made from turnips, carrots, onions, celery, leeks, garlic, parsley, cloves, butter, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Winter Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and slice the turnips and carrots, and peel the onions.

Make the soup

  1. In a large pot, melt the butter and fry the vegetables until light yellow.

  2. Add the celery and leeks, cut into pieces, and stir for 6 minutes.

  3. Add garlic, parsley, cloves, salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  4. Cover with water and simmer for 3 hours, skimming off any scum.

  5. Strain the soup.

Serve

  1. Serve. Optionally, add croutons, vermicelli, Italian pasta, or rice.

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. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  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
Fat that browns and softens the vegetables, carrying flavour from the start of the soup.
Leeks
Mild onion-like sweetness that builds the savoury base of the broth.
Turnips
Starchy body that adds substance and a slightly sweet, earthy flavour to the soup.
Carrots
Natural sweetness and body that helps thicken the simmered broth.

The step that matters

Frying the vegetables in butter. Frying until light yellow lightly browns the vegetables and softens them, building flavour before the water is added. Overbrowning can make the soup bitter, so colour should stay pale.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Clovethe original

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