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Vegetable Soup

A hearty soup of carrots, potatoes, turnip, onion, celery, and dripping simmered in boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Vegetable Soup

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

  1. Wash all the vegetables except the onion.

  2. Peel the onion and potatoes before parboiling.

  3. Peel the turnip, scrape the carrot, and celery, then cut them all into very small pieces.

Make the soup

  1. Melt the dripping in a saucepan.

  2. Add the vegetables.

  3. Simmer for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent burning.

  4. Add the boiling water and salt.

  5. Simmer for 1 hour or until the vegetables are quite soft.

  6. Skim off the fat.

  7. Season to taste.

Finish and serve

  1. For a smoother soup, strain through a wire sieve or colander, rubbing the vegetables through with a wooden spoon.

  2. Return to the saucepan and bring to a boil before serving with toasted bread.

  3. 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.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 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. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked 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 when simmered, thickening the soup and giving it body.
Onion
Adds savory aromatic flavor as the base of the soup.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and color to the soup.
Dripping
Fat for cooking the vegetables, carrying flavor and adding richness.
Turnip
Adds earthy flavor and body as it softens during simmering.

The step that matters

Stirring during the first simmer. Cut vegetables in fat can scorch on the base of the pan before liquid is added. Occasional stirring keeps them moving and prevents burning, which would taint the flavor of the whole soup.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, potato, turnip, celery, sugar, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, potato, turnip, celery, sugar, pepper. 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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