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Vegetable Soup

A hearty vegetable soup made with mixed vegetables, stock, butter, flour, and fried stale bread topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Vegetable Soup

Why it works: Turnip and parsnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 590 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Prepare the vegetables by stripping, peeling, washing, and cutting them.

  2. Drain the vegetables and melt butter in a saucepan.

  3. Mix in flour gradually while stirring with a wooden spoon.

Make the soup

  1. Add the prepared vegetables and pour in boiling water.

  2. Season with salt and pepper.

  3. Once the vegetables are cooked, remove from heat and press through a colander into another saucepan.

  4. Put the new saucepan on the fire.

Fry the bread and serve

  1. Cut stale bread into pieces and fry in melted butter over low heat.

  2. Pour the soup into a tureen and top with the fried bread.

  3. Serve 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 + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together590 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Lentils + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together109 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Lentils + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together51 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Mixed vegetables
Provide the main body, flavour and substance of the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour, and browns the flour base and bread.
Flour
Thickens the butter and stock mixture so the soup becomes smooth and body-rich.
Stock
Supplies the liquid base and savoury flavour of the soup.
Stale bread
Becomes crisp when fried in butter, adding texture to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Mix in flour gradually while stirring. Adding flour slowly while stirring prevents lumps, since flour clumps when it meets hot fat or liquid without being evenly dispersed.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, lentils, lettuce, carrot, turnip, parsnip, celery):

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Cashew nutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, lentils, lettuce, carrot, turnip, parsnip, celery. 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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