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Common Vegetable Soup

A simple soup made with potatoes, turnips, parsnips, carrots, peas, and salt, optionally flavored with weak stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and parsnip 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 ↓

Common Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and chop the potatoes, turnips, parsnips, and carrots.

Cook

  1. Boil the vegetables in 1 gallon of water until reduced to nearly half.

  2. Add green peas and salt to taste.

Finish

  1. If desired, add weak stock for extra flavor.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Parsnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

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

  3. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Potato + parsniptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together353 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Their starch softens and slightly thickens the broth as they cook.
Turnips
Add earthy flavor and body to the broth.
Parsnips
Add sweetness and a mellow, earthy flavor.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and color to the broth.
Green peas
Add a sweet note and tender texture.

The step that matters

Boil until reduced to nearly half. Simmering evaporates water, concentrating flavor and thickening the broth as starches release from the vegetables. Reducing too far makes the soup thick and intensely salty, so check it as it cooks.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

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