Name: Vegetable Soup
Ingredients: 1 head cauliflower; 1 head cabbage; 1 onion; 1 lb potatoes; 2 pints green peas; 4 cups water; herbs to taste; 1 oz suet; 1 oz coarse sea salt

Why it works: Cauliflower and cabbage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 305 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

Wash and shred all the vegetables into neat, thin strips, except for the green peas and cauliflower, which should be broken into small pieces.

Cook

Melt the suet in a pot, then add all the vegetables and allow them to absorb the suet.
Add the water and salt, and cook gently until the vegetables are tender.

Serve

Serve with crumbled bread.

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.

Cauliflower + cabbagetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together305 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cauliflower + peastop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together313 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Cabbage + oniontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,001 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Potato + peastop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,016 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

Suet: Fat that coats the vegetables and carries flavour during the initial cooking.
Potatoes: Starch that softens during cooking and thickens the soup slightly.
Green peas: Adds sweetness and body to the soup.
Cabbage: Contributes texture and savoury flavour as it becomes tender.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cauliflower, cabbage, onion, potato):

Beansfits better
Lentilsfits better
Chestnutfits about as well
Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cauliflower, cabbage, onion, potato. 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.