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Vegetable Soup

A hearty soup of celery, turnips, carrots, beets, parsley, onions, barley, peas, and butter simmered in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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. Soak the dried green peas in soft water for 12 hours.

Cook

  1. Combine all vegetables and soaked peas in a large pan with 6 quarts of water and 1 tablespoon of salt.

  2. Bring to a boil and let simmer for about 3 hours.

  3. Strain the soup through a sieve or fine colander back into the pan.

Finish

  1. If the soup is not thick enough, mix some peas or lentil flour with cold water until smooth, then stir into the soup.

  2. Add the butter and any additional seasoning to taste.

  3. Optionally, add finely powdered dried celery leaves after straining.

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. Celery + carrottop 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 + barleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 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

Dried green peas
Thicken the soup as they soften and break down during the long simmer.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel at the end.
Onions
Build savory aromatic flavor as they cook down into the broth.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the broth during simmering.

The step that matters

Straining the soup. Pressing the cooked vegetables and peas through a sieve or fine colander gives a smooth texture and removes fibrous bits. Doing it while the soup is hot helps the solids pass through more easily.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, turnip, carrot, parsley, onion, barley, butter. 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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