Skip to main content
Main

Vegetable Soup

A hearty soup of onions, turnips, carrot, potatoes, parsley, butter, flour, vegetable broth, and milk, seasoned with salt and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Vegetable Soup

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Peel the onions, turnips, carrot, and potatoes.

  2. Finely chop them.

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter.

  2. Add the chopped vegetables and parsley.

  3. Cook over medium heat for 10 minutes.

  4. Stir in the flour, mixing well.

  5. Moisten with vegetable broth and boiling milk.

  6. Bring to a boil while stirring.

  7. Season with salt and sugar.

  8. Strain through a fine sieve.

  9. Return to the heat and boil again.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Fat that softens the vegetables and carries their flavor at the start.
Flour
Thickens the broth and milk into a smooth, body-rich soup.
Potatoes
Starch that adds body and helps the soup thicken as it cooks.
Onions
Provide sweetness and aroma as they cook gently in butter.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour, then add the liquids gradually. Flour clumps if it hits hot liquid all at once. Stirring it into the fat first and adding the broth and milk while stirring keeps the soup smooth and evenly thickened.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, carrot, potato, butter, parsley, flour, milk):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, carrot, potato, butter, parsley, flour, milk. 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 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipes