Name: Vegetable Soup
Ingredients: 1 large soup bone; 4 cups cold water; 2 onions, chopped; 2 turnips, chopped; 3 potatoes, chopped; ¼ head of cabbage, chopped; 1 can of tomatoes or 12 raw tomatoes, sliced; Salt to taste; Pepper to taste

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

Place the soup bone in a pot with cold water and boil for 4 hours.

Add the vegetables

Chop the onions, turnips, potatoes, and cabbage together.
Add the chopped vegetables to the soup and boil for 30 minutes.

Finish the soup

Add the tomatoes, salt, and pepper, and boil for an additional hour.

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.

Turnip + cabbagetop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together897 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Potato + tomatotop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,798 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,585 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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

Soup bone: Releases flavor and body into the water as it simmers for hours.
Potatoes: Soften during simmering and thicken the broth slightly as their starch releases.
Tomatoes: Add acidity and a fresh, savory tang that balances the rich broth.

Swap the tomato

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

Leekfits better
Broccolifits better
Chivefits better
Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, turnip, potato, cabbage, 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.