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Winter Vegetable Soup

A hearty soup of turnips, carrots, onions, celery, leeks, garlic, parsley, and spices simmered in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Winter Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a large pot, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the turnips, carrots, and onions; fry until light yellow.

  3. Stir in the celery and leeks; fry for an additional 6 minutes.

  4. Add the garlic, parsley, cloves, salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  5. Pour in the water and bring to a simmer.

  6. Skim off any scum that forms on the surface.

  7. Simmer for 3 hours, then strain the soup before serving.

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. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Fat that softens the vegetables and carries flavour during the initial frying.
Turnips
Form the body of the soup and add a mildly sweet, earthy flavour as they cook.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and colour, and thicken the broth as they soften.
Onions
Build the savoury base of the soup as they caramelise slightly when fried.
Leeks
Contribute a mild, sweet onion-like flavour that deepens during simmering.

The step that matters

Skim off the scum. Foam that rises while the water heats contains impurities that can make the broth cloudy and taste bitter, so removing it early keeps the soup clear and clean-tasting.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, carrot, onion, butter, celery, leek, garlic):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, carrot, onion, butter, celery, leek, garlic. 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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