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Vegetable Soup

A hearty vegetable soup made with onions, carrots, turnips, cabbage, tomatoes, and optional sweet cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Vegetable Soup

Why it works: Carrot and turnip 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 soup

  1. Bring 3 quarts of water to a boil in a porcelain kettle.

  2. Add the chopped onions, carrots, and turnips.

  3. Simmer for 30 minutes.

  4. Stir in the chopped cabbage and stewed tomatoes, along with a bunch of sweet herbs.

  5. Let the soup boil for 20 minutes.

  6. Strain the soup through a sieve, rubbing the vegetables through.

Finish and serve

  1. In a separate bowl, cream together 2 tablespoons of butter and 1 tablespoon of flour.

  2. Season the soup with salt, pepper, and 1 teaspoon of sugar.

  3. If using, stir in ½ cup of sweet cream and the butter‑flour mixture.

  4. Bring the soup to a boil again before serving.

  5. Serve with fried bread chips or poached eggs.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + cabbagetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  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

Onions
Build the flavour base of the soup as they soften and release their sweetness.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body, giving the soup its color and tangy depth.
Butter and flour
Creamed together and stirred in, they thicken the soup and add richness.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and a smoother, silkier texture to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Stirring in the butter-flour mixture. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps; creaming it with butter first lets it disperse smoothly. The soup must then be brought back to a boil so the starch thickens fully and tastes cooked rather than raw.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, carrot, turnip, cabbage, 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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