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Vegetable Soup

A hearty vegetable soup made with onions, turnip, carrots, potatoes, celery, stock, milk, butter, and sago.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Vegetable Soup

Why it works: Parsley and carrot 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 Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the vegetables and cut them into small, thick pieces.

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan, add the vegetables, and sauté for 10 minutes.

  2. Add the stock and simmer until the vegetables are tender, about 14 minutes.

  3. Rub the mixture through a sieve or colander back into the saucepan.

  4. Add the milk and sprinkle in the sago, cooking gently for 15 minutes.

  5. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt to taste.

  6. Stir in the chopped parsley.

Serve

  1. Serve with toasted bread or squares of bread fried in dripping.

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. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Parsley + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sago
Thickens the soup as it cooks gently in the liquid.
Potatoes
Break down when cooked, adding body and a smooth texture to the puréed soup.
Butter or dripping
Carries the sauté, adding richness and helping the vegetables brown lightly.
Onions
Soften and sweeten when sautéed, building the flavour base of the soup.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and colour, and thicken the soup once puréed.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mellows the flavour of the vegetable base.

The step that matters

Rubbing the mixture through a sieve. Pressing the cooked vegetables through a sieve breaks down their fibres into a smooth, even purée. Skipping or rushing this leaves the soup grainy and uneven in texture.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, parsley, pepper, turnip, carrot, 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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