Why it works: Carrot and celery 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
Combine the turnips, carrots, potatoes, onion, celery or parsley, and rice in a large pot.
Add 3 quarts of water and bring to a boil.
Boil for 3 hours, then strain the soup through a coarse sieve.
Finish and serve
Return the strained soup to the pot and place it over the fire.
Add the butter and stir until melted.
Dredge in a little flour, let it boil, and then serve.
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.
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Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together10,173 recipes
Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
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Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together8,002 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,418 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together9,023 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together3,107 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
- Potatoes
- Break down during long simmering to give the soup body and thickness.
- Turnips
- Add earthy flavor and body as they soften during the long boil.
- Carrots
- Add sweetness and color as they cook down into the broth.
- Butter
- Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished soup.
- Flour
- Dusted in at the end and boiled, it thickens the soup slightly.
The step that matters
Dredging in the flour. Flour sprinkled into hot liquid clumps unless it is whisked in well, and it must boil to cook out its raw starch taste and to thicken properly.
Swap the onion
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, carrot, potato, celery, rice, butter, flour):
- Leekfits better
- Parsnipfits better
- Okrafits better
- Onionthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, carrot, potato, celery, rice, butter, flour. 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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