Skip to main content
Main

Vegetable Soup

A broth of carrots, turnip, onion, leek, celery, parsley, butter, flour, water, and milk, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Vegetable Soup

Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the vegetables and cut them into strips about the size of a thick match.

Cook the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan and fry the vegetables slowly until the butter is absorbed.

  2. Add the boiling water, half of the milk, salt, and pepper, and simmer gently until the vegetables are tender (5 to 10 minutes).

  3. Mix the flour with the remaining milk until smooth, then pour it into the saucepan. Stir and cook for a few minutes, then 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. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  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

Butter
Fat that softens the vegetables gently and carries their flavour during frying.
Flour
Thickens the milk and water into a smooth, lightly body-rich soup.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mild sweetness to the soup base.
Carrots
Provide sweetness and colour, and soften to a tender texture when simmered.

The step that matters

Adding the flour mixture. Flour must be mixed smoothly with cold milk before it goes into the hot soup, because flour dropped in directly clumps. Stirring while it cooks lets the starch swell and thicken the liquid evenly.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, leek, celery, parsley, butter, flour. 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

Spring 46Beef 45Winter 31French 11Lentil 9Clear 8 See all 425 →

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesTurnip SoupTurnip Soup43 recipesLeek SoupLeek Soup31 recipes