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Spring and Summer Soup Without Stock

A hearty soup made with pork, cabbage, potatoes, carrots, turnip, parsnip, flour, and water, served over toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Spring and Summer Soup Without Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Cut the pork into thin slices and fry them slowly in a soup pot.

  2. Finely chop the vegetables (except the potatoes) and add them to the pot with the cooked pork.

  3. Cover tightly and cook gently on low heat for 1 hour, stirring frequently to prevent burning.

Simmer the soup

  1. Add boiling water and let it simmer gently for 1 hour.

  2. Slice the potatoes and mix the flour with a little cold water, then add both to the pot.

  3. Season with salt and pepper, and simmer gently for another hour.

Serve

  1. Serve the soup over toasted bread in a tureen.

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 + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cabbage + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

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

  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

Flour
Thickens the broth as it cooks, giving the soup a fuller body.
Potatoes
Soften during the long simmer and add starch that gives the soup body.
Salt pork
Renders fat into the pot that carries flavour through the vegetables.
Onions
Build savory sweetness and aroma as they soften in the fat.

The step that matters

Cover tightly and cook gently on low heat, stirring often. Low, covered cooking softens the vegetables and pork without scorching the bottom of the pot. Frequent stirring spreads heat evenly and prevents the flour and starches from sticking and burning.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, onion, potato, carrot, turnip, flour, bread. 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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