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Vegetable Soup, Another Way

A hearty vegetable soup made with onions, potatoes, carrots, turnips, butter, water, bread crust, celery, herbs, pepper, salt, optional anchovy and mushroom catsup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Vegetable Soup, Another Way

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and slice the onions, potatoes, carrots, and turnips.

Make the soup

  1. In a large pot, fry the vegetables in butter until softened.

  2. Pour in the boiling water and add the crust of bread, celery, sweet herbs, white pepper, and salt.

  3. Stew gently for 4 hours.

  4. Strain the soup through a coarse cloth.

Finish

  1. Add sliced carrots, celery, and turnips to the strained soup and stew until tender.

  2. If desired, add an anchovy and a tablespoon of mushroom catsup.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Softened in butter to build the sweet, savoury base of the soup.
Potatoes
Break down during stewing to thicken the soup and give it body.
Butter
Fat that softens the vegetables and carries flavour into the soup.
Crust of bread
Absorbs liquid and adds body to the soup as it stews.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, potato, carrot, turnip, butter, bread, celery. 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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