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Vegetable Soup. No. 4

A hearty vegetable soup made with potatoes, turnip, celery, onions, carrot, sweet herbs, and broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot 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. No. 4

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the potatoes, turnip, celery, onions, carrot, and sweet herbs.

  2. Put them into a stewpan and cover tightly.

  3. Cook gently for 20 minutes.

Simmer and finish

  1. Add 2 quarts of broth and let it boil gently.

  2. Simmer for 2 hours.

  3. Strain through a fine sieve.

  4. Return to the pan, season with pepper and salt, and bring to a boil.

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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Turnip + carrottop 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. 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 during simmering to give the soup body and a thicker texture.
Onions
Build savory sweetness and depth as they soften in the pot.
Celery
Adds aromatic, savory flavor to the base as it cooks gently.
Carrot
Contributes natural sweetness and color to the finished soup.
Broth
Forms the liquid base that carries and blends the vegetable flavors.

The step that matters

Cover tightly and cook gently. Gentle heat under a tight lid softens the vegetables and draws out their flavor without boiling away liquid or scorching. A hard boil would make the soup cloudy and reduce its volume.

Swap the onion

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

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

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