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Vegetable Soup

A hearty soup made with carrots, potatoes, turnip, onion, celery, dripping, and seasonings, simmered in boiling water.

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

Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash all vegetables except the onion.

  2. Peel the onion and potatoes before parboiling.

  3. Peel the turnip, scrape the carrot, and celery.

  4. Cut all vegetables into very small pieces.

Make the soup

  1. Melt the dripping in a saucepan.

  2. Add the vegetables.

  3. Simmer for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent burning.

  4. Add the boiling water and salt.

  5. Simmer for 1 hour or until the vegetables are quite soft.

  6. Skim off the fat.

  7. Season to taste and serve.

  8. For a smoother soup, strain through a wire sieve or colander, rubbing the vegetables through with a wooden spoon.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

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

Potatoes
Starchy body that softens and thickens the soup as it simmers.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma as it softens in the dripping.
Carrot
Contributes natural sweetness and colour to the soup.
Turnip
Adds a mild, slightly peppery flavour and body to the soup.

The step that matters

Simmer until the vegetables are quite soft. Vegetables must cook fully so their starches and cell walls break down. Undercooked pieces stay firm and make the soup taste raw and uneven.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, potato, turnip, celery, sugar, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, potato, turnip, celery, 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.

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