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Soup Stock Without Meat

A clear vegetable stock made with butter, olive oil, onion, flour, tomatoes, celery, split peas, and milk or cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Olive and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,539 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Soup Stock Without Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a frying pan, heat the butter and olive oil.

  2. Add the minced onion and cook until slightly yellow.

  3. Stir in the flour and cook for 5 minutes.

  4. Slowly add the boiling water.

  5. Add the prepared tomatoes, celery, and split peas.

  6. Cook until sufficiently done, then strain through a fine sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Return to heat and add boiling milk or cream.

  2. Serve hot with croutons or crackers.

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. Olive + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,539 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 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

Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the fat base used for cooking the onion.
Flour
Thickens the liquid and gives the soup body as it cooks with the fat.
Split peas
Break down during cooking and give the stock body and a thicker texture.
Milk or cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour. Cooking the flour in fat for a few minutes removes its raw taste and helps it thicken evenly. Adding the boiling water slowly keeps lumps from forming.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, olive, onion, flour, tomato, celery, milk):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Lentilsfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, olive, onion, flour, tomato, celery, milk. 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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