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Vegetable Soup

A hearty vegetable soup with barley, tomatoes, and assorted root vegetables, simmered with a soup bone for flavor.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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

  1. Combine water, barley, tomatoes, potato, onion, parsley, turnip, cabbage, red pepper, black pepper, and salt in a large pot.

  2. Add the soup bone and bring to a boil.

  3. Reduce heat and simmer for three hours.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Barley + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Parsley + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Barley
Swells as it cooks, thickening the broth and adding body and chew.
Soup bone
Releases gelatin and savory flavor into the broth during long simmering.
Potato
Softens and breaks down slightly, adding body and starch to the broth.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and depth of flavor to the broth.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for three hours. A gentle simmer lets the bone release gelatin and flavor slowly while the barley cooks through. A hard boil can make the broth cloudy and the barley break apart.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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

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