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A Family Soup

A hearty soup made with tongue, mutton, root vegetables, rice or oatmeal, and toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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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 ↓

A Family Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the tongue in cold water and salt.

  2. Place the tongue, mutton, turnips, carrots, onion, parsnips, and celery in a stewpan.

  3. Add enough water to cover the ingredients and let it stew slowly for several hours.

  4. Strain the soup and let it cool.

Finish and serve

  1. Save the soft parts of the tongue and the carrots.

  2. When ready to serve, remove the fat from the soup.

  3. Add the reserved tongue parts, sliced carrots, fresh turnips, and small-cut onions.

  4. Include a few spoonfuls of half-boiled rice or oatmeal, and season with pepper and salt.

  5. Stew until the fresh vegetables are tender and serve with toasted bread.

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.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Tongue
Provides the rich, tender meat and body that flavours the broth.
Mutton
Adds savoury depth and gelatin to the broth as it stews slowly.
Rice or oatmeal
Thickens the soup slightly as its starch swells during cooking.
Turnips
Contribute mild sweetness and soft texture to the finished soup.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and colour, softening as the soup cooks.

The step that matters

Stew until the fresh vegetables are tender. Fresh turnips and carrots added late need enough gentle heat to soften fully. Stewing them too briefly leaves them firm, while a hard boil can break them up and cloud the broth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, turnip, carrot, parsnip, celery, pepper, rice):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, turnip, carrot, parsnip, celery, pepper, rice. 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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