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A Family Soup

A hearty soup made with tongue, mutton scraps, root vegetables, rice or oatmeal, and toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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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 ↓

A Family Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Wash the tongue in cold water and coarse sea salt.

  2. Place the tongue, mutton scraps, turnips, carrots, onions, parsnips, and celery in a stewpan.

  3. Add enough water to cover the ingredients and let it stew slowly for several hours.

  4. Strain the soup.

  5. Let the soup cool.

  6. Save the kernels and soft parts of the tongue and the carrots.

  7. Remove the fat from the soup.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the reserved tongue parts, sliced carrots, fresh turnips, and finely chopped onions.

  2. Stir in ½ cup of half‑boiled rice or oatmeal.

  3. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt to taste.

  4. Stew until the fresh vegetables are tender.

  5. Serve with toasted bread.

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 + 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. 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

Tongue
Provides the rich, meaty flavour and the tender soft parts saved for the final soup.
Rice or oatmeal
Thickens the soup as its starches swell and soften during simmering.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and body while becoming tender in the broth.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and colour to the broth and the finished soup.
Onions
Build savoury depth as they soften and release their flavour into the stock.

The step that matters

Let the soup cool and remove the fat before adding the fresh ingredients. Fat solidifies on a cooled broth, so it can be lifted off cleanly. Leaving it in makes the soup greasy and heavy on the palate.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, turnip, carrot, parsnip, celery, pepper, rice):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, turnip, carrot, parsnip, celery, pepper, rice. 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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