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Vegetable Soup

A hearty soup made with carrots, turnips, onions, celery, cauliflower, potatoes, tomatoes, milk, butter, pepper, and salt.

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

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 ↓

Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the cauliflower and place it in 2 quarts of water; simmer until tender.

  2. Slice the carrots, turnips, onions, and potatoes; chop the celery and tomatoes.

Cook

  1. In a frying pan, melt the butter and cook the sliced vegetables until lightly browned.

  2. Add the browned vegetables to the cauliflower and let the mixture simmer for 3 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, stir in the milk, pepper, and salt to taste.

  2. Serve with fried bread or toast cut into small dice.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Turnip + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together286 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 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

Potatoes
Break down during simmering to thicken the soup and give it body.
Onions
Browning in butter develops sweet, savoury flavour that carries through the soup.
Butter
Adds fat for richer flavour and helps the vegetables brown in the pan.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softens the soup's flavour when stirred in at the end.
Cauliflower
Simmers until tender, forming the base liquid that the soup is built on.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and fresh flavour to balance the sweetness of the vegetables.

The step that matters

Adding the milk just before serving. Milk held at a simmer for a long time can scorch on the pan base, develop a cooked flavour, or separate. Stirring it in at the end keeps it smooth and fresh-tasting.

Swap the cauliflower

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, onion, celery, potato, milk, tomato):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Cauliflowerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, onion, celery, potato, milk, tomato. 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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