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Vegetable Soup

A hearty soup of turnips, carrots, onions, pearl barley, butter, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Prepare

  1. Chop the turnips, carrots, and onions.

  2. Cover the vegetables with cold water in a pot.

Cook and strain

  1. Bring to a boil and simmer for 2 to 3 hours.

  2. Rub the mixture through a sieve into a bowl.

Finish the soup

  1. Stir in the butter and milk.

  2. If the soup is too thick, add more milk.

  3. Bring to a boil again and serve.

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 + barleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Carrot + barleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together784 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Turnips
Give the soup its body and mild, earthy sweetness once softened and strained.
Carrots
Add sweetness and colour, and thicken the purée as they break down during simmering.
Spanish onions
Build savoury depth and aroma as they soften and dissolve into the broth.
Pearl barley
Adds starch that thickens the soup and gives a chewy texture.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mellows the flavour, and thins the soup if it is too thick.

The step that matters

Simmering for 2 to 3 hours. Long, gentle simmering softens the vegetables and barley fully so they can be pressed through a sieve smoothly. Keeping it at a gentle simmer rather than a hard boil prevents scorching on the base of the pot.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, carrot, barley, butter, milk, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, carrot, barley, butter, milk, pepper. 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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