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Parsnip Soup with Stock

A hearty soup made from parsnips, onions, celery, and stock, seasoned with salt, pepper, and optional spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsnip and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 561 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Parsnip Soup with Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a stew pan, combine the parsnips, onions, celery, and stock.

  2. Stew the vegetables until tender, about 2 hours.

  3. Drain the vegetables and press them through a coarse sieve.

  4. Return the puree to the soup and bring to a boil.

Season and serve

  1. Season with salt, pepper, and cayenne if desired.

  2. To balance sweetness, add a little tomato if desired.

  3. Serve very hot, adding boiling milk or chili vinegar if liked.

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. Parsnip + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together561 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Celery + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  4. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 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

Parsnips
Form the main body of the soup and give it its sweet, earthy flavor and thick puree texture.
Onions
Add savory depth and aroma as they soften during the long stew.
Celery
Contributes savory, aromatic flavor to the stock base as it cooks.
Stock
Provides the cooking liquid that softens the vegetables and becomes the body of the soup.

The step that matters

Stew the vegetables until tender. Vegetables must be fully softened so they press through the sieve into a smooth puree; undercooked pieces stay fibrous and make the soup grainy.

Swap the tomato

The recipe marks tomato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsnip, onion, celery, pepper, milk, vinegar):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsnip, onion, celery, pepper, milk, vinegar. 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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