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Spanish Soup

A vegetable soup with onions, chili peppers, tomatoes, turnip, corn, carrots, beef extract, Worcestershire sauce, and ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Spanish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the onions, chili peppers, tomatoes, turnip, and carrots finely.

  2. Put all the chopped vegetables in a pot with 1 quart of water.

Cook the soup

  1. Boil until the vegetables are almost done.

  2. Add the tomatoes and corn, and boil for 5 more minutes.

  3. Stir in the beef extract until it dissolves.

  4. Add Worcestershire sauce and ketchup, and season with salt to taste.

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 + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + corntop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Provide sweetness and aromatic flavor as they soften in the broth.
Turnip
Adds body and a mild sweetness as it cooks until tender.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and soft texture to the soup.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and liquid, giving the soup its base flavor.
Beef extract
Adds concentrated savory, meaty flavor to the broth.

The step that matters

Boil until the vegetables are almost done. Chopped vegetables cook quickly, so overcooking turns them mushy. Adding the tomatoes and corn later keeps their texture and flavor fresher.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, pepper, tomato, corn, carrot, beef, sauce):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, pepper, tomato, corn, carrot, beef, sauce. 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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