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Vegetable Soup

A hearty vegetable soup made with onions, carrots, turnips, celery, toasted bread, herbs, butter, and stock.

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

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Combine onions, carrots, and turnips in a stewpan and wash and drain them well.

  2. Add butter and powdered sugar to the vegetables, then toss over high heat for 10 minutes without browning.

Make the soup

  1. Pour stock or boiling water over the vegetables.

  2. Add toasted bread, celery, herbs, salt, and pepper.

  3. Stew for 3 hours, skimming occasionally.

  4. Strain the soup before serving.

Finish and serve

  1. Add sliced carrot, celery, and turnip before serving.

  2. Flavor with a spoonful of Harvey's sauce or a little ketchup.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Builds the savory base of the soup as they soften and release their flavor.
Butter
Carries flavor from the vegetables and adds richness to the soup.
Turnips
Adds earthy sweetness and body to the vegetable base.
Toasted bread
Thickens the soup slightly and adds a toasty, roasted aroma.
Celery
Contributes a fresh, savory aroma that rounds out the stock.
Powdered sugar
Encourages gentle browning-free sweetness that balances the vegetables.

The step that matters

Toss the vegetables without browning. Tossing over high heat for 10 minutes softens and sweetens the vegetables in butter. If they brown, the soup turns darker and more bitter, changing its clean flavor.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, butter, bread, celery, parsley, thyme. 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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