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Vegetable Cream Soup

A creamy soup made from boiled potatoes, tomatoes, carrots, onion, turnip, and parsley thickened with flour and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 ↓

Vegetable Cream Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and chop the potatoes, tomatoes, carrots, onion, turnip, and parsley.

  2. Cover the vegetables with 2 quarts of cold water in a pot.

Make the soup

  1. Boil until the vegetables are tender, then strain through a colander.

  2. Return the strained liquid to the stove and add 1 quart of milk.

  3. In a small bowl, mix 1 tablespoon of flour with 1 tablespoon of butter until smooth, then add to the soup to thicken.

  4. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 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. Potato + carrottop 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 cooked, giving the soup body and a creamy texture.
Milk
Adds richness and creaminess to the broth.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it combines with the butter and liquid.
Butter
Adds fat and smooth richness, helping the flour blend without lumps.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and butter paste. Flour mixed into the soup can clump if added dry or too quickly. Blending it with butter first into a smooth paste, then stirring it in, helps it disperse evenly and thicken the soup without lumps.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, carrot, onion, turnip, parsley, milk, 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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