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Clear Soup

A clear vegetable soup made with onions, celery, carrot, turnip, herbs, pepper, salt, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Clear Soup

Why it works: Celery and carrot 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 ↓

Clear Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the onion finely and fry it brown in the butter in a large saucepan.

  2. Add 5 pints of water to the saucepan.

Make the soup

  1. Prepare and cut the carrot, turnip, and celery into small pieces.

  2. Add the chopped vegetables, mixed herbs, pepper, and salt to the water along with the fried onions.

  3. When the vegetables are tender, drain the liquid and return it to the saucepan.

  4. Bring the soup to a boil 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. Celery + carrottop 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. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 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
Frying it brown in butter builds a deep, savoury flavour base for the broth.
Celery
Adds aromatic flavour and sweetness as it softens in the simmering broth.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and body to the broth as it cooks until tender.
Turnip
Adds mild sweetness and a subtle earthy flavour to the broth as it cooks.

The step that matters

Frying the onion brown. Browning the onion in butter develops deeper savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction and caramelisation. Pale onions give a flatter, less rich broth, so the colour matters.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, butter, carrot, turnip, 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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