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Vegetable Soup

A hearty soup made with onions, carrots, turnip, lettuce or cabbage, leeks, dripping, water, broken bread, pepper, and sea salt.

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

Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the vegetables and cut them all very small; wash and dry them.

Make the soup

  1. Melt the dripping in a large saucepan; add the vegetables, cover, and toss over the heat until well mixed.

  2. Pour in the water and bring to a boil without a lid; add seasonings and skim well.

  3. Boil for 30 minutes, skimming as needed.

  4. Cover and let simmer for 1 hour or until the vegetables are thoroughly cooked.

Serve

  1. Place the broken bread into a hot soup tureen and pour the boiling soup over it.

  2. Cover and serve very hot.

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 + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together526 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Lettuce + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together217 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 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

Dripping
Fat that softens the vegetables and carries flavour through the soup.
Bread
Soaks up the hot broth, thickening the soup and giving it body.
Onions
Build the base flavour, becoming sweet and savoury as they cook.
Leeks
Add a mild onion-like sweetness and aroma to the broth.
Carrots
Add sweetness and colour while softening into the broth.

The step that matters

Skimming the boiling water. Skimming removes foam and impurities that rise as the broth boils, keeping the soup clear and clean-tasting. Skimming during the first boil and the 30-minute boil is what keeps the broth clear.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, lettuce, leek, bread, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, lettuce, leek, bread, pepper. 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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