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Vegetable Soup

A hearty soup made with beef broth, potatoes, onions, turnip, cabbage, tomatoes, rice, and optional thickening and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Vegetable Soup

Why it works: Turnip and cabbage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 897 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Boil a piece of beef to make broth.

  2. Add boiling water to the broth to reach the desired amount of soup.

Cook the soup

  1. Stir in sliced potatoes, onions, grated turnip, chopped cabbage, tomatoes, cooked rice, and red pepper.

  2. Season with salt and pepper.

  3. Cook for 30 minutes.

  4. Strain, rubbing the vegetables through a sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. If desired, mix flour with milk, add the beaten egg and sweet cream, and let it boil.

  2. Serve with crackers.

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. Turnip + cabbagetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Potato + tomatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,798 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 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

Beef
Gives the broth its meaty flavour as it boils.
Potatoes
Add starch and body, thickening the soup as they break down.
Onions
Add savory, aromatic sweetness to the broth.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and moisture, giving the soup its tang and colour.
Cooked rice
Adds starch and body, helping thicken the soup.
Egg
Enriches and thickens the soup when it is added to the boiling liquid.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, potato, onion, turnip, tomato, rice, pepper):

  1. Okrafits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, potato, onion, turnip, tomato, rice, 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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