Name: Vegetable Soup
Ingredients: 2 quarts meat stock; 1 carrot, chopped; 1 large turnip, sliced into thin pieces; 1 potato, diced; 2 onions, sliced; 1 cup chopped cabbage (optional); Salt to taste

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

Make the stock

Make meat stock by boiling bones and leftover meat from beef, mutton, fowl, and ham in plenty of cold water until reduced to shreds.
Strain the stock and let it cool, then remove the fat.

Cook the soup

In the stock, add the carrot, turnip, potato, onions, and cabbage if desired.
Boil for 1 hour, then season with salt to taste.

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.

Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Turnip + cabbagetop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together897 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,107 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,585 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

Meat stock: Provides the main savory liquid base and flavor for the whole soup.
Potato: Breaks down slightly as it cooks, adding body and thickening the broth.
Turnip: Holds its shape in simmering liquid and adds a mildly sweet, earthy flavor.
Onions: Release sugars and aromatic compounds during boiling, adding sweetness and depth.

Swap the cabbage

The recipe marks cabbage as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, carrot, turnip, potato, onion):

Leekfits better
Parsnipfits better
Okrafits better
Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, carrot, turnip, potato, onion. 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.