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Soup

Italian Paste Soup

A soup made with water, Italian paste, carrot, turnip, celery, and meat extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Italian Paste Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the vegetables

  1. Boil the carrot, turnip, and celery in water for 20 minutes.

Rinse the paste

  1. Pour boiling water over the Italian paste to remove loose flour.

  2. Strain the water off the paste after 5 minutes.

Finish the soup

  1. Add the paste to the boiling vegetable water.

  2. Once the paste is cooked, remove the vegetables and stir in meat extract.

  3. Serve hot.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + meattop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,880 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Carrot + meattop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,905 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Italian paste
Its starch thickens the broth slightly and gives the soup its body as it cooks.
Carrot
Adds gentle sweetness and color to the broth as it simmers.
Turnip
Adds mild sweetness and a little body to the cooking liquid.
Celery
Adds aromatic, savory flavor to the cooking water.

The step that matters

Adding the paste to the boiling vegetable water. Pasta added to water at a full boil cooks evenly and stays separate. Added to cooler liquid, its surface starch leaches out and the pieces clump. Remove it once tender, because it keeps softening in hot broth and can turn mushy.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, celery, meat):

  1. Parsnipfits about as well
  2. Turnipthe original
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Potatofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, celery, meat. 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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