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White Vegetable Soup

A clear soup made with carrots, turnip, onion, celery, stock, milk, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

White Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soup base

  1. Melt the butter in a pot and toss in the carrot, turnip, onion, and celery for 3-4 minutes.

  2. Add the bay leaf, celery seeds, and stock.

  3. Boil gently for 45 minutes or until the vegetables are tender.

Thicken and finish

  1. Mix the flour with a little milk to form a smooth paste.

  2. Add the remaining milk and pour into the soup.

  3. Stir until boiling.

  4. Boil for about 6 minutes, stirring continuously.

  5. Remove the bay leaf and celery seeds.

  6. Season to taste.

  7. Add more stock or milk if the soup is too thick.

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 + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 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

Flour
Thickens the milk and stock into a smooth, body-rich soup as it cooks.
Butter
Carries the vegetables' flavour and softens them before liquid is added.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and body to the soup as it simmers.
Milk
Makes the soup creamy and mellows its flavour when added to the thickened base.

The step that matters

Adding the flour paste and boiling. Flour must be mixed smoothly with a little milk first, then stirred in and boiled, so starch can swell and thicken evenly. Stirring continuously prevents lumps and scorching on the base of the pot.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, celery, butter, flour, milk, pepper. 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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