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Soup

Vegetable Soup

A hearty soup made with boiled meat, barley, rice, tomatoes, and a variety of vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Vegetable Soup

Why it works: Turnip and carrot 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

  1. Place the meat in cold water and boil for 2 hours.

  2. Add salt, barley, rice, and tomatoes.

Add the vegetables

  1. Grind potatoes, onion, turnip, carrot, cabbage, and celery in a meat grinder.

  2. Add the ground vegetables and parsley to the boiling stock.

Finish

  1. Slice the lemon just before serving and add it to the soup.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Barley + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Barley + ricetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together568 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  5. Potato + carrottop 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

Meat
Gives the stock body and a savory, rich flavor as it simmers.
Barley
Releases starch as it cooks, thickening the broth and adding chewy texture.
Rice
Releases starch as it cooks, adding body to the broth.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and a deeper, savory sweetness to the stock.
Potatoes
Soften and release starch, giving the soup a fuller, thicker body.
Lemon
Adds bright acidity that lifts the flavor of the soup.

The step that matters

Adding the lemon just before serving. Lemon juice's bright acidity fades and can turn dull when it is boiled for a long time, so adding it at the end keeps the flavor fresh.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, barley, rice, potato, onion, turnip, carrot):

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

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