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Soup

Vegetable Soup

A hearty soup made with veal knuckle, carrots, turnip, onions, lettuce, peas, and seasonings.

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 lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 526 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the knuckle of veal or fresh meat in water.

  2. Add the carrot, turnip, onions, and lettuce to the pot.

  3. Stir in the salt, sugar, pepper, and cayenne.

  4. Boil for one hour.

  5. Add the peas and continue to boil until tender, about 20 minutes to 45 minutes depending on their age.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Lettuce + peastop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,293 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 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

Veal knuckle or fresh meat
Gives the broth its body and savoury, meaty flavour as it simmers.
Peas
Add sweetness and body to the soup and soften during the final boil.
Onions
Build aromatic sweetness and depth as they cook into the broth.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, carrot, turnip, onion, lettuce, sugar, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, carrot, turnip, onion, lettuce, sugar, 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.

More vegetable soup recipes

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