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Vegetable Soup

A soup of vegetables, peas, rice, and potatoes simmered in water and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Vegetable Soup

Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Boil the vegetables for five minutes.

  2. Drain the vegetables thoroughly.

Make the soup

  1. In a saucepan, combine boiling water and stock.

  2. Add the vegetables to the saucepan and boil slowly until tender.

  3. Add tomatoes, parsley, sugar, salt, and pepper to the saucepan.

  4. Pour the soup into a tureen and 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. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 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

Stock
Provides the liquid base and savoury flavour of the soup.
Dried peas
Thicken the soup as they soften and add body and substance.
Rice
Absorbs liquid and softens, thickening the soup and adding body.
Carrots
Add sweetness and colour as they soften during the long simmer.
Onions
Build aromatic flavour as they cook down into the soup base.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and fresh, tangy flavour to the broth.

The step that matters

Drain the vegetables thoroughly. Excess boiling water left on the vegetables would dilute the stock and weaken the soup's flavour. Draining well keeps the broth concentrated and seasoned as intended.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, parsley, sugar, pepper, carrot, onion, celery):

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Black-eyed peafits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, parsley, sugar, pepper, carrot, onion, 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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