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Vegetable Soup

A hearty soup made from a mix of cabbage, carrots, turnips, parsnips, endive, leeks, celery, and herbs, simmered in butter or oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Vegetable Soup

Why it works: Endive and chervil share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 75 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice all the vegetables into small pieces, using equal quantities of each.

  2. Add a little thyme and more herbs if desired.

Stew the vegetables

  1. In a large saucepan, melt a bit of butter, goose dripping, or oil.

  2. Add the vegetables to the saucepan and cover it.

  3. Stew the vegetables gently until they are soft and yellow, shaking the pan often to prevent burning.

Finish the soup

  1. Once soft, gradually pour in boiling water until it reaches a thick soup consistency.

  2. Stew gently for a little longer and serve.

  3. Optionally, strain the soup before serving, but note that this may lose some excellent vegetable flavor.

  4. Add pepper and coarse sea salt to taste.

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. Endive + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together75 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Leek + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together148 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together184 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together590 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

Carrots
Provide sweetness and body as they soften during slow stewing.
Leeks
Add mild onion-like aroma and sweetness as they cook down.
White cabbage
Adds bulk and a mild sweetness as it softens in the stew.
Turnips
Contribute body and a mildly sweet, earthy flavor when stewed.
Parsnips
Add sweetness and body as they soften during stewing.
Butter or goose dripping or oil
Provides fat for gentle frying and a richer mouthfeel in the soup.

The step that matters

Stewing the vegetables gently. Cooking over low heat with covered pan and frequent shaking softens the vegetables evenly and prevents scorching on the base, which would add bitter, burnt flavors.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, parsnip, endive, parsley, leek, chervil):

  1. Beetrootfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, parsnip, endive, parsley, leek, chervil. 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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