Skip to main content
Main

Vegetable Soup

A hearty vegetable soup made with a soup bone, assorted chopped vegetables, oatmeal or noodles, cooked meat, tomato, parsley, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Vegetable Soup

Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Place the soup bone in a pot of cold water and bring to a slow boil for 3 hours, skimming off fat occasionally.

Prepare the vegetables

  1. In another pot, add the finely chopped vegetables: cabbage, carrots, onions, turnip, green peas, and celery.

  2. Strain the soup from the beef into the pot of vegetables at about 11:30 AM.

  3. Add the oatmeal, noodles, or dumplings to the vegetable pot.

Finish and serve

  1. Cut the cooked meat into small squares and add it to the soup.

  2. About 15 minutes before serving, add the chopped tomato and parsley.

  3. Season the soup and vegetables with salt, pepper, and a dash of cayenne.

  4. Remove the celery leaves 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Cabbage + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Celery + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 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

Soup bone
Slow simmering releases flavour and gelatin into the water, giving the broth body.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and colour as they soften in the broth.
Onions
Build savoury depth as they soften and release their sugars during cooking.
Cabbage
Adds mild sweetness and texture as it cooks down in the soup.
Oatmeal or noodles or dumplings
Absorb liquid and thicken the soup while adding body and starch.
Tomato
Adds acidity and brightness to balance the rich broth.

The step that matters

Skimming the fat during the simmer. Fat that is not skimmed as the bone simmers stays in the broth and makes the soup greasy and heavy on the palate. Skimming occasionally keeps the broth clean and lighter.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, carrot, onion, turnip, celery, meat, tomato):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, carrot, onion, turnip, celery, meat, tomato. 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.

More vegetable soup recipes

Spring 46Beef 45Winter 31French 11Lentil 9Clear 8 See all 425 →

You might also like

Meatless Tomato SoupMeatless Tomato Soup23 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesGreen PeasGreen Peas229 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipes