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Soup

Minestrone Milanese

A hearty vegetable soup with cabbage, beans, French beans, peas, potatoes, celery, carrots, turnips, vegetable marrow, herbs, broth, and optional meats.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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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 ↓

Minestrone Milanese

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop and prepare all vegetables.

  2. Boil larger vegetables until partially cooked.

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, combine broth and all vegetables.

  2. Add bacon, fried parsley, garlic, onion, ham, or salt pork if desired.

  3. When nearly boiling, add rice or pasta.

  4. Cook until rice or pasta is tender.

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

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

  2. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 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. Cabbage + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 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

Cabbage
Adds body and a mild sweetness as it softens in the broth.
Beans
Add substance and creaminess as their starch thickens the broth slightly.
Potatoes
Release starch into the broth, giving the soup more body.
Carrots
Contribute natural sweetness and color as they cook down.
Rice or pasta
Absorbs liquid and thickens the soup as it cooks in the pot.

The step that matters

Adding rice or pasta. Added too early, rice or pasta keeps absorbing broth and turns mushy or dries the soup out. Adding it when the broth is nearly boiling lets it cook through to tender without overcooking.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, beans, potato, celery, carrot, turnip, parsley. 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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