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Turkey Soup

A soup made from leftover turkey meat, onions, carrots, turnips, celery, parsley, and boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Turkey Soup

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Turkey Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and simmer

  1. Crack all the bones and cut the turkey meat into pieces.

  2. Add the onion, carrot, turnip, celery, parsley, and any other vegetables you have.

  3. Boil slowly for 3 hours.

Finish

  1. Strain the soup and add boiled rice.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 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

Cold turkey meat
Provides the main protein and savory flavor that gives the soup its body.
Turkey bones
Release collagen and flavor into the liquid during long simmering, enriching the broth.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aromatic depth as it softens in the broth.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and color to the soup.
Boiled rice
Adds starch and bulk, thickening the soup slightly and making it more filling.

The step that matters

Boil slowly for 3 hours. A gentle, steady simmer extracts flavor and gelatin from the bones and meat without clouding the broth. A hard rolling boil breaks up the ingredients and makes the soup cloudy and greasy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, meat, carrot, turnip, celery, parsley, rice):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, meat, carrot, turnip, celery, parsley, rice. 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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