Skip to main content
Main

Vegetable Soup

A thickened vegetable soup made with carrots, parsnips, potatoes, butter, flour, mustard, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Vegetable Soup

Why it works: Carrot and parsnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,097 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil the vegetables in the water for 2½ hours, stirring often.

  2. Add more water to maintain 2 quarts of soup if the water boils away too quickly.

  3. In a bowl, mix the butter, flour, mustard, salt, and pepper with 1 cup of cold water.

  4. Stir the mixture into the soup.

  5. Boil the soup for 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Place the yolks of the eggs in a serving tureen.

  2. Pour the soup over the yolks.

  3. Stir well.

  4. 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. Carrot + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

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

  3. Parsnip + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together89 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Parsnip + potatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together353 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Carrot
Adds sweetness and body as it softens during the long simmer.
Parsnip
Adds sweetness and body as it softens during the long simmer.
Potato
Breaks down during simmering, adding starch that thickens the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks into the liquid.
Egg yolks
Enrich the soup with fat and richness when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Pouring the soup over the yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated, but pouring hot soup over them too quickly, or stirring too little, can leave lumps or scrambled bits. Pour slowly while stirring so the yolks warm gently and blend smoothly into the soup.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, parsnip, potato, butter, flour, pepper, egg):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, parsnip, potato, butter, flour, pepper, egg. 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.

More vegetable soup recipes

Spring 46Beef 45Winter 31French 11Lentil 9Clear 8 See all 425 →

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipes