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Vegetable Soup

A hearty soup made with green vegetables, barley, lentils, rice, peas, beans, stock, onion, turnip, carrot, salt, and pepper.

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

Why it works: Lentils and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 109 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the hoytres in water to cover them.

  2. In a pot, combine the soaked hoytres, barley, lentils, rice, dried green peas, haricot beans, stock, onion, turnip, and carrot.

Cook and strain

  1. Boil until the vegetables are tender.

  2. Rub the mixture through a wire sieve and return it to the pot.

Season and serve

  1. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

  2. Serve very 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.

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. Lentils + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together109 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lentils + beanstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together135 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Barley + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Barley + ricetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together568 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Barley
Adds body and starch, thickening the soup as it cooks.
Lentils
Break down during boiling, adding body and substance to the soup.
Dried green peas
Soften during boiling and help thicken the soup when sieved.
Haricot beans
Soften during boiling and contribute body and starch to the soup.
Stock
Forms the liquid base and carries the flavour of the whole soup.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (barley, lentils, rice, beans, onion, turnip, carrot):

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Milletfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, lentils, rice, beans, onion, turnip, carrot. 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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