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Soup Mongole

A veal stock vegetable soup with carrot, turnip, leek, tomatoes, peas, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 1,046 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Combine carrot, turnip, leek, and ½ tablespoon butter in a saucepan.

  2. Cover and cook slowly for 5 minutes.

Make the soup base

  1. Combine tomatoes, mashed peas, 1 teaspoon butter, salt, white pepper, and veal stock in a second saucepan.

  2. Simmer gently for 30 minutes.

  3. Press the mixture through a sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the cooked vegetable straws and adjust seasoning if needed.

  2. Mix cornstarch with a little cold water to form a thin paste.

  3. Stir into the soup and simmer for 5 minutes 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.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Turnip + leektop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together8,001 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + tomatotop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,597 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,310 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + peastop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,994 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

Veal stock
Provides the main liquid and savoury body of the soup.
Cornstarch
Thickens the soup when heated, giving it a smoother body.
Peas
Add body and flavour to the strained soup base.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and a rounded, savoury flavour to the soup.

The step that matters

Stirring in the cornstarch paste. Cornstarch must be mixed smoothly into a thin paste with cold water before it goes in, because added directly to hot liquid it clumps. Once heated, it thickens as its starch granules swell and gelatinise, so the soup should simmer briefly to fully thicken.

Flavor stand-ins for the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, leek, butter, tomato, peas, veal):

  1. Celerybetter flavor fit
  2. Parsleybetter flavor fit
  3. Thymebetter flavor fit
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, leek, butter, tomato, peas, veal. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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