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A Simple Soup

A hearty vegetable soup made with carrots, turnips, onions, lettuce, celery, parsley, butter, stock, and green peas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 10,172 recipes mention both. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

  1. In a pot, stew the carrots, turnips, onions, lettuce, celery, and parsley with butter, salt, and pepper for 20 minutes.

  2. Add the mixture to the stock and include the green peas.

  3. Let it stew for 3 hours.

  4. Press the soup through a sieve.

  5. Boil it again before serving.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together10,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Celery + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together6,805 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together34,118 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together8,001 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

Carrots
Add body and natural sweetness as they soften during the long stew.
Turnips
Contribute bulk and a mild, slightly peppery flavour to the base.
Butter
Carries flavour and adds richness when the vegetables are first stewed.
Green peas
Add sweetness, colour and a soft texture to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Press the soup through a sieve. Pressing the cooked vegetables through a sieve breaks them down and removes fibrous bits, giving the soup a smooth, even texture.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

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

  1. Parsnipbetter flavor fit
  2. Potatobetter flavor fit
  3. Leekbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, lettuce, celery, parsley, butter, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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