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Soup

Vegetable Soup Without Meat

A hearty vegetable soup made with turnips, carrots, onions, celery, leeks, garlic, parsley, and optional vermicelli, Italian paste, or rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Vegetable Soup Without Meat

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a pot, melt the butter and fry the turnips, carrots, and onions until light yellow.

  2. Add the celery and leeks, stir, and fry for 6 minutes.

  3. Add the garlic, parsley, salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  4. Cover with water and simmer for 3 hours.

  5. Strain the soup and add vermicelli, Italian paste, or rice.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Turnips
Give the soup its body and mild, sweet earthy flavor as they soften.
Carrots
Add sweetness and color while softening into the broth.
Onions
Build a savory base through gentle frying that releases their sugars.
Celery
Contributes aromatic, savory flavor to the broth.
Leeks
Add a mild onion-like sweetness and depth to the broth.
Vermicelli, italian paste, or rice
Adds starch and bulk, thickening the soup slightly and making it more filling.

The step that matters

Frying the vegetables in butter until light yellow. Gentle frying browns the sugars in the vegetables and builds the flavor base of the soup. Frying too hot can scorch the butter and turn the vegetables bitter, so keep the heat moderate.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, carrot, onion, butter, celery, leek, garlic. 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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