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Vegetable Soup

A hearty vegetable soup with onions, turnip, carrots, potatoes, celery, parsley, sago, stock, milk, butter, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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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

  1. Prepare the vegetables and cut them into small thick pieces.

  2. Melt the butter over medium heat.

Make the soup

  1. Add the vegetables and sauté for 10 minutes.

  2. Add the stock and simmer until the vegetables are tender, about 1.5 hours.

  3. Rub the mixture through a sieve or colander back into the saucepan.

  4. Stir in the milk.

  5. Sprinkle in the sago and cook gently for 15 minutes.

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

  7. Add the chopped parsley.

Serve

  1. Serve with toasted bread or squares of bread fried in dripping.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  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 into the soup, giving body and a thick, smooth texture.
Sago
Thickens the soup as its starch swells during gentle cooking.
Butter or dripping
Fat that softens the vegetables and adds richness to the soup.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mellows the flavour of the soup.
Onions
Build the flavour base as they soften and sweeten in the fat.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture through a sieve or colander. Pressing cooked vegetables through a sieve breaks down their fibres and gives a smooth texture; skipping or rushing this leaves the soup coarse and lumpy.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, carrot, potato, celery, parsley, milk, butter. 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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