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Another Vegetable Soup

A simple vegetable soup made with carrots, turnips, onions, peas, and optional beef flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Another Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Bring 3 quarts of water to a boil in a large pot.

  2. Add sliced onions, half of the diced carrots, turnips, and peas.

  3. Cook until the vegetables are soft.

  4. Rub the mixture through a sieve to create a smooth base.

Finish the soup

  1. Return the base to the pot, add the remaining vegetables, and boil until tender.

  2. Stir in a little fresh beef dripping or add a small beef bone for added flavor, if desired.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Carrots
Add body, sweetness and color to the soup as they soften.
Turnips
Contribute a mild, slightly peppery flavor and body to the broth.
Peas
Add sweetness and a soft, thickening texture when cooked and sieved.
Onions
Build savory depth and aroma as they soften in the water.

The step that matters

Rubbing the mixture through a sieve. Cooked vegetables must be fully soft before sieving, otherwise the purée stays gritty and the base will not turn smooth.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, onion, pepper, beef):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, onion, pepper, beef. 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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