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Puree of Vegetable Soup

A pureed soup made from cabbage, carrot, potato, turnip, onion, celery, and water, finished with cream, butter, and served with toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Puree of Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Cut the cabbage, carrot, potato, turnip, onion, and celery.

  2. Put the vegetables into a saucepan with 2 to 3 quarts of water.

  3. Add coarse sea salt to taste and boil for 1.5 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. When ready to serve, add ⅓ cup of cream or milk and 1 tablespoon of butter.

  2. Serve with toast squares.

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. Cabbage + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 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

Potato
Its starch thickens the soup as it cooks, giving the puree a fuller body.
Cream or milk
Adds richness and a smoother, silkier texture to the finished soup.
Butter
Adds fat for flavour and a rounder, silkier mouthfeel to the finished soup.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

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