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Vegetable Soup

A hearty soup made with beef bone, tomatoes, okra, potatoes, onion, celery, carrot, and turnip, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Vegetable Soup

Why it works: Celery and carrot 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 ↓

Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. In a large pot, combine the beef or soup bone and water; cook slowly for 2 hours.

Add the vegetables

  1. Add the sliced tomatoes, okra, potatoes, onion, celery, carrot, and turnip.

  2. Season with salt and pepper; boil for 2 hours or until vegetables are very soft.

  3. Strain the soup through a colander, skimming off any grease.

  4. If the soup is too thick, add boiling water or milk to reach desired consistency.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with crackers or croutons.

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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Okra + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together53 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Tomato + okratop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together327 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef or soup bone
Slow cooking releases flavor and gelatin into the water, giving the broth body and savory depth.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body, and their juices help build the soup's overall flavor.
Okra
Releases mucilage during long cooking, which thickens the soup and gives it a silky texture.
Potatoes
Starch softens during simmering and partly breaks down, adding body and thickness to the soup.

The step that matters

Boiling until the vegetables are very soft. Vegetables need prolonged simmering to break down and blend into the broth. Stopping early leaves firm pieces and a thin, less cohesive soup.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, okra, potato, onion, celery, carrot, turnip):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, okra, potato, onion, celery, carrot, turnip. 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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