Name: Vegetable Soup
Ingredients: 1 piece of pork (not too fatty); bones from roast beef; water (enough for 4-6 servings); 2 potatoes, diced; 2 carrots, diced; 2 stalks of celery, diced; 1 onion, diced; 1 small Savoy cabbage, chopped; coarse sea salt to taste

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 ↓

Vegetable Soup

4-6 servings

Ingredients

Directions

In a soup kettle, combine the pork, roast beef bones, and enough water for 4-6 servings.
Bring the water to a boil.
Add the diced potatoes, carrots, celery, onion, and chopped Savoy cabbage.
Season with coarse sea salt to taste.
Simmer for 2 hours.
Remove the bones and pork before serving.

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.

Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,173 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Pork + beeftop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,690 recipes

Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).
Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,107 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Pork + potatotop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,668 recipes

Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

What each ingredient does

Pork: Adds meaty flavor to the broth as it simmers.
Potatoes: Soften during simmering and thicken the broth slightly as their starch releases.
Carrots: Add sweetness and firm texture that holds up through long simmering.
Savoy cabbage: Adds mild sweetness and tender leafy texture to the soup.

Swap the cabbage

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

Turnipfits better
Tomatofits better
Leekfits better
Cabbagethe original

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