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Graham Soup

A hearty vegetable soup with onions, carrots, turnips, cabbage, celery, tomatoes, sweet herbs, butter, and milk thickened with corn flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Graham Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a large pot, combine the chopped onions, carrots, turnips, celery, and 3 quarts of water.

  2. Simmer gently for 30 minutes.

  3. Add the chopped cabbage and continue to simmer for another 15 minutes.

  4. Stir in the tomatoes and sweet herbs, and boil for 20 minutes.

  5. Strain the soup through a colander back into the pot.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the butter, milk thickened with corn flour, pepper, and salt.

  2. Bring to a boil and serve hot.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Build the aromatic base and add sweetness as they cook down into the broth.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the broth as they soften during simmering.
Turnips
Contribute earthy flavour and body to the broth during long simmering.
Milk
Adds richness and creaminess, with corn flour thickening it so it blends smoothly.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a rounder mouthfeel to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Add the thickened milk and bring back to a boil. Corn flour thickens only when heated to a boil, and cooked starch can clump if added to liquid unevenly. Stirring the milk mixture in gradually and keeping the soup moving helps it thicken smoothly and evenly without lumps.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, carrot, turnip, celery, tomato, butter, milk):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, carrot, turnip, celery, tomato, butter, milk. 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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