Skip to main content
Soup

Vegetable Soup

A hearty soup made with onions, turnips, celery, carrots, butter, and beef bone gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Vegetable 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 ↓

Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare and cut the onions, turnips, celery, and carrots into small pieces.

  2. Wash the vegetables and place them in a stewpan with the butter.

  3. Cover the stewpan and cook until the vegetables are slightly soft.

Simmer and finish

  1. Add the gravy soup to the vegetables and let it simmer for 4 to 5 hours.

  2. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve, return it to the fire, boil, and skim 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. Turnip + carrottop 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 + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Fat that softens the vegetables gently and adds richness to the soup.
Gravy soup
Liquid base that carries the vegetable flavour during the long simmer.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and colour to the soup.
Onions
Add savoury depth and aroma as they soften.

The step that matters

Cover the stewpan and cook until the vegetables are slightly soft. Cooking the vegetables gently in fat with a lid softens them and concentrates their flavour without browning. Cooking too hard or too long can give a dull, stewed taste before the soup has simmered.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

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

More vegetable soup recipes

Spring 46Beef 45Winter 31French 11Lentil 9Clear 8 See all 425 →

You might also like

Cream of CeleryCream of Celery37 recipesIndian Spiced Potato Soup with Tofu and SpinachIndian Spiced Potato Soup with Tofu and Spinach448 recipesClear Carrot and Bottle Gourd SoupClear Carrot and Bottle Gourd Soup65 recipesMock Bisque SoupMock Bisque Soup51 recipes