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Vegetable Soup

A simple vegetable soup made with carrots, potatoes, parsnip, turnip, onion, celery, butter, salt, pepper, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Vegetable Soup

Why it works: Parsnip and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 590 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Peel the potatoes, onion, turnip, and parsnip.

  2. Scrape the carrot and celery.

  3. Wash all vegetables except the onion and cut into very small pieces.

Make the soup

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter or dripping and add the vegetables.

  2. Simmer for 10 minutes, stirring often.

  3. Gradually add the pepper, salt, and water.

  4. Stir until it boils, then simmer for 30 minutes.

  5. Skim off the fat and serve.

  6. Alternatively, strain the soup through a sieve or colander into a basin, rubbing the vegetables through with a wooden spoon.

  7. Pour the soup back into the saucepan and boil for 10 minutes, stirring often.

  8. Serve plain or with fried or toasted bread.

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. Parsnip + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together590 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Potatoes
Break down during simmering to thicken the soup and give it body.
Onion
Builds a sweet, savoury base flavour as it softens in the fat.
Butter or dripping
Carries flavour from the pan and adds richness to the soup.
Parsnip
Adds natural sweetness and body as it cooks down.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and colour, and thickens the soup as it softens.

The step that matters

Rubbing the vegetables through the sieve. Pressing cooked vegetables through a sieve breaks down their fibres and starches, giving a smooth, thick texture. Stop once only the pulp is left, or the soup stays grainy and thin.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, potato, parsnip, turnip, butter, celery, 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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