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Soup

Russian Soup

A hearty soup made with onion, apple, peppercorns, potato, carrot, turnip, stock, butter, flour, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Russian Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare all the vegetables by slicing them.

Make the soup

  1. Place the sliced vegetables in a pan with seasoning and boil rapidly for 1 hour.

  2. Rub the mixture through a wire sieve and bring it back to a boil.

  3. Mix the butter and flour together, then add to the soup.

Serve

  1. Whip the cream in a tureen and pour it over the soup 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 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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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

Potato
Breaks down during boiling to give the soup body and a thicker texture.
Butter and flour
Flour and melted butter form a roux that thickens the soup and adds richness.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Onion
Releases sugars and aromatic compounds as it boils, building the soup's base flavour.

The step that matters

Mixing the butter and flour into the soup. Adding flour directly to hot liquid can form lumps. Mixing it with butter first coats the starch grains so they disperse evenly and thicken smoothly.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, potato, carrot, turnip, butter, flour, cream):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, potato, carrot, turnip, butter, flour, cream. 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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