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Vegetable Soup

A simple soup made with turnips, carrots, cabbage, spinach, celery, parsley, onion, herbs, oil, and water, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Vegetable Soup

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Collect seasonal vegetables and herbs, and cut them finely.

Cook

  1. Heat oil in a stewpan and add the vegetables.

  2. Stew gently until the vegetables are tender.

  3. Add 2 quarts of boiling water and stew for 15 minutes.

  4. Season with salt and pepper before serving.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + spinachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together320 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Onion
Softens in the hot oil to build a savoury aromatic base for the soup.
Oil
Carries fat-soluble flavours and helps the vegetables cook evenly in the pan.
Carrots
Release natural sugars as they cook, adding gentle sweetness to the broth.
Cabbage
Softens into tender pieces, adding body and mild sweetness to the soup.

The step that matters

Stew gently until the vegetables are tender.. Low, gentle heat softens the vegetables' cell walls slowly while keeping them intact. Vigorous boiling at this stage can scorch the base of the pan and break the vegetables into a mush, dulling both flavour and texture.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, carrot, cabbage, spinach, celery, parsley, pepper):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, carrot, cabbage, spinach, celery, parsley, 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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