Skip to main content
Main

Vegetable Soup

A hearty soup made with mixed vegetables, butter, flour, and hot water, seasoned with pepper and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Vegetable Soup

Why it works: Turnip and parsnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 590 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut up the vegetables of your choice, ensuring to include potatoes or beans for thickening.

Make the base

  1. In a saucepan, heat the butter until very hot.

  2. Add the cut onions and stir to prevent burning until they are nicely browned.

  3. Stir in the flour until it reaches the same color as the onions.

  4. Pour in the hot water, then add pepper and salt, followed by the other vegetables.

Simmer and serve

  1. Let the mixture simmer for two hours, adding more hot water as needed.

  2. Press the soup through a colander and return it to the pot to simmer until ready to serve.

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. Turnip + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together590 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  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. 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

Potatoes or beans
Break down during simmering to thicken the soup body.
Butter
Carries heat and browns the onions, adding richness to the base.
Flour
Browns with the onions and thickens the liquid into a body.
Onions
Caramelise when browned, adding sweetness and depth of flavour.

The step that matters

Stirring the onions while they brown. Onions scorch quickly in hot butter, and scorched sugars turn bitter and dark. Constant stirring keeps them evenly golden, which gives the soup its flavour base.

Swap the peas

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, carrot, turnip, potato, beans, parsnip, celery. 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

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesGreen PeasGreen Peas229 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipes