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Onion Soup

A vegetable soup made with carrots, potato, turnip, cabbage leaves, leek, onion, celery, parsley, butter, sugar, bouillon, and optional caramel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Onion Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Cut the carrot, potato, turnip, and cabbage leaves into thin slivers.

  2. Chop the onion, leek, parsley, and celery finely.

Make the soup

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and sugar over moderate heat until the butter is light brown.

  2. Add the prepared vegetables to the saucepan.

  3. Pour in 1 cup of bouillon, season with salt and pepper, and let it simmer gently for about 2 hours.

  4. After 2 hours, add 1½ quarts of bouillon and simmer for another 15 minutes.

  5. If the soup is too light in color, add a little caramel made by burning sugar in a spoon and mixing it into the soup.

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

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. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 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

Butter
Browns with the sugar to add a toasted, savoury flavour and richness to the broth.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and body as it softens during the long simmer.
Potato
Breaks down slightly during simmering, thickening the soup and adding body.
Leek
Contributes a mild onion-like sweetness and aroma to the broth.
Bouillon
Forms the liquid base, carrying the flavour of the vegetables and seasoning.

The step that matters

Browning the butter and sugar. Melting the butter and sugar over moderate heat until light brown creates caramelised, toasted flavours. Heating too fast can burn the sugar, which turns bitter and dark.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, potato, turnip, leek, onion, celery, parsley):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, potato, turnip, leek, onion, celery, parsley. 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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