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Vegetable Soup

A hearty soup of diced potatoes, carrot, turnip, onion, celery, barley simmered in water with dripping and optional brown sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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

Prepare

  1. Prepare all the vegetables and place them in clean, cold water, except for the onion, which should be peeled and parboiled.

  2. Cut the vegetables into dice.

Cook the soup

  1. Melt the dripping in an iron saucepan.

  2. Add the vegetables.

  3. Simmer for about 10 minutes, stirring frequently to prevent burning.

  4. Add the boiling water and salt.

  5. Simmer for 1 hour, or until the vegetables are tender.

  6. Thicken the soup with barley, adding it half an hour before the soup is finished.

  7. Skim off the fat.

Finish and serve

  1. Season to taste.

  2. Sprinkle in chopped parsley if desired 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. Turnip + barleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 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. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Break down partly as they cook, giving the soup body and a thicker texture.
Pearl barley
Swells as it simmers, thickening the soup and adding a chewy texture.
Onion
Builds savoury depth as it softens and releases its sugars into the broth.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and colour to the broth as it cooks.

The step that matters

Stirring during the first simmer. Sugars and starches in the diced vegetables can scorch on the base of the pan in the fat before liquid is added. Frequent stirring keeps them moving and prevents burning, which would give the soup a bitter, burnt taste.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, carrot, turnip, sugar, celery, pepper, barley):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, carrot, turnip, sugar, celery, pepper, barley. 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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