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Vegetable Soup

A soup made with bacon, carrots, turnips, parsnips, onions, potatoes, celery, beef broth, cream, pepper, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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

Make the soup

  1. Lay the bacon at the bottom of a stew-pan.

  2. Add the sliced carrots, turnips, parsnips, onions, potatoes, and celery on top of the bacon.

  3. Pour in a small quantity of beef broth.

  4. Gradually add more broth as needed while simmering the mixture until it becomes a pulp.

  5. Rub the mixture through a sieve back into the stew-pan.

Finish

  1. Stir in the cream or milk and season with pepper and herbs.

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
Break down during simmering to thicken the soup into a smooth pulp.
Cream or milk
Adds richness and a silky texture to the sieved soup.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the soup as they soften and purée.

The step that matters

Simmering until a pulp forms. Adding broth gradually and simmering slowly lets the vegetables soften fully so they purée smoothly. Too little liquid can scorch the bottom of the pan, while too much thins the soup before it is sieved.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, parsnip, potato, celery, beef, cream. 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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