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Vegetable Soup

A hearty soup made with onions, turnip, carrot, potatoes, water, Marmite, milk, butter, flour, salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

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

Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Wash, peel, and cut the vegetables into very thin shreds.

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a large pot over medium heat.

  2. Add the vegetables and stir for 10 minutes without browning them.

  3. Dissolve the MARMITE in the water and add it to the pot.

  4. Let the mixture simmer for about an hour, skimming off any scum.

  5. Season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

Thicken and serve

  1. Mix the flour with the milk to form a smooth paste.

  2. Add the paste to the soup and boil for another 10 minutes.

  3. Serve hot.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 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

Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour while the vegetables soften gently in the pot.
Flour
Mixed with milk, it thickens the broth to a smooth, lightly body-rich texture.
Milk
Combined with flour, it adds creaminess and helps thicken the soup.
Potatoes
Starchy vegetable that softens during simmering and helps give the soup body.
Turnip
Firm root vegetable that becomes tender in the simmering broth, adding earthy flavour.

The step that matters

Stir the vegetables without browning them. Browning adds roasted, bitter notes that change the soup's clean, mild flavour. Gentle stirring over medium heat softens the vegetables while keeping them pale.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, carrot, potato, milk, butter, flour, 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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