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Vegetable Soup

A soup of carrots, parsnips, potatoes, butter, flour, mustard, eggs, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Vegetable Soup

Why it works: Carrot and parsnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,097 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil the vegetables in the water for 2½ hours, stirring often.

  2. If the water boils away too quickly, add more to maintain 2 quarts of soup.

  3. In a bowl, mix the butter, flour, mustard, salt, and pepper with a teacup of cold water.

  4. Stir this mixture into the soup and boil for 10 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Place the yolks of the eggs in a tureen.

  2. Pour the soup over the yolks, then stir well.

  3. Serve.

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 + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

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

  3. Parsnip + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together89 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Parsnip + potatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together353 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Carrot
Adds sweetness and body to the broth as it cooks down.
Parsnip
Adds sweetness and a thicker texture to the soup.
Potato
Breaks down during long boiling, thickening the soup and adding body.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor through the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup when mixed into the liquid and boiled.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the soup when stirred in as it is poured over them.

The step that matters

Pour the soup over the yolks. Pouring hot soup slowly over the yolks while stirring warms them gradually. Adding them to boiling soup directly can scramble the eggs instead of smoothly enriching the liquid.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, parsnip, potato, butter, flour, pepper, egg):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, parsnip, potato, butter, flour, pepper, egg. 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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