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Grain-vegetable Soup

A hearty soup made with rice, corn, barley, vegetables, and a flour-based dumpling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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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 ↓

Grain-vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Start the grains

  1. Combine rice, sweet corn, and cracked barley with 4 cups of water in a stock pot.

  2. Boil the mixture for 1 hour.

Add vegetables and dumplings

  1. Add chopped celery, onion, turnip, carrot, and sweet potato to the pot along with another quart of water.

  2. Boil for 2 hours over low heat.

  3. Add 1 quart of boiling water to the soup.

  4. In a bowl, mix flour and baking powder, then blend in nut butter or oil and the beaten egg.

  5. Roll the mixture into small balls and drop the balls into the soup.

  6. Boil for 30 minutes.

Finish

  1. Five minutes before serving, add parsley, peanut butter, peanutta, thyme, and salt.

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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Barley + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + sweet potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together71 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

Flour
Forms the body of the dumplings, giving them structure as they cook.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking so the dumplings puff and turn light.
Egg
Binds the dumpling mixture so the balls hold together in the broth.
Sweet potato
Breaks down slowly during long simmering, adding body and natural sweetness to the soup.
Barley
Releases starch during long simmering, thickening the soup and adding chewy texture.

The step that matters

Drop the dumpling balls into the soup. The dough must be rolled small and dropped into gently simmering liquid. Dumplings that are too large or cooked too hard may stay dense on the inside or break apart in the pot.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, corn, barley, celery, turnip, carrot, sweet potato):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, corn, barley, celery, turnip, carrot, sweet 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.

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