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Cheap Soup

A hearty soup made with lean meat, rice, potatoes, oatmeal, and vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cheap Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the soup meat into small pieces.

  2. Put the meat in a stewpan with water, onions, turnips, parsley, pepper, and salt.

Cook

  1. Add the rice, potatoes, and oatmeal.

  2. Let everything stew for 4 hours and serve.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 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. Parsley + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 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

Soup meat
Connective tissue breaks down into gelatin during long simmering, giving the broth body and richness.
Rice
Releases starch as it cooks, helping thicken the broth.
Potatoes
Starch softens and thickens the broth as the potatoes break down.
Oatmeal
Its starch thickens the broth as it cooks.
Onions
Slow cooking softens their sharpness and adds a sweet, savory aroma.
Turnips
Add a mild sweetness and tender body to the soup as they cook.

The step that matters

Let everything stew for 4 hours. A gentle simmer lets tough meat connective tissue slowly turn into gelatin, leaving the meat tender. A hard boil toughens meat proteins and can break up the soft vegetables and grains.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, turnip, parsley, pepper, rice, potato):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, turnip, parsley, pepper, rice, 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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