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Cream of Vegetable Soup

A creamy soup made from carrots, turnips, celery, onion, potatoes, butter, flour, milk, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery 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 ↓

Cream of Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Combine carrots, turnips, celery, onion, and potatoes in a pot.

  2. Add boiling water and cook slowly for one hour.

  3. Drain the vegetables, reserving the liquid.

  4. Pass the vegetables through a vegetable press and add to the reserved liquid.

Make the cream base

  1. In a separate pan, melt the butter, then stir in the flour until well blended.

  2. Gradually add the milk, mixing thoroughly.

  3. Combine the milk mixture with the vegetable pulp and liquid.

  4. Heat the soup, boiling for a few minutes to cook the flour, then serve immediately.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  5. Carrot + potatotop 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

Butter
Enriches the soup with fat and carries flavour, and forms the base of the roux.
Flour
Thickens the milk and butter into a smooth, body-giving base.
Milk
Creates the creamy liquid that gives the soup its smooth, rich texture.
Potatoes
Break down during cooking to add starch and body to the soup.
Carrots
Add sweetness and colour, and thicken the soup as they break down.
Turnips
Add earthy flavour and, once pressed, contribute body to the soup.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour after adding the milk. Flour must be boiled for a few minutes to cook out its raw, pasty taste and to reach full thickening. Serving too early leaves the soup tasting floury and thinner than intended.

Swap the onion

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

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

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