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Vegetable Soup

A hearty beef-based vegetable soup with onions, celery, potatoes, carrot, cabbage, tomatoes, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Vegetable Soup

Why it works: Celery and carrot 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 ↓

Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the broth

  1. Combine the beef shank and water in a large pot.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

Simmer the soup

  1. Add the onion, celery, potatoes, carrot, cabbage, tomatoes, salt, black pepper, and red pepper.

  2. Simmer until the vegetables are tender, about 30 minutes.

  3. Mix the flour with water in a small bowl to create a paste.

  4. Stir the paste into the soup to thicken it.

Serve

  1. Serve hot, garnished with fresh parsley.

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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Celery + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

  4. Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef shank
Releases savory flavor and body into the broth as it simmers.
Potatoes
Soften during simmering and add starch that gives the soup body.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and color, balancing the savory broth.
Flour
Starch that thickens the broth when stirred in as a paste.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness that mellows as it cooks.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour paste into the soup. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps; mixing it with water first into a smooth paste lets the starch disperse evenly so the soup thickens smoothly.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, celery, potato, carrot, tomato, 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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