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Vegetable Soup

A hearty soup made with beef, veal, mutton bones, ham, carrots, turnips, onions, herbs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Vegetable Soup

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

  1. Combine the beef, veal, mutton bones, cracked veal bones, ham, herbs, and water in a large pot.

  2. Cook slowly for 5 hours.

  3. Strain the soup, reserving 5 quarts of liquid.

  4. Season the meat and bones, and return them to the stock-pot with 3 quarts of the reserved liquid.

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Melt the butter in a frying pan.

  2. Add the sliced carrots, turnips, and onions. Fry until light brown.

  3. Add 2 cups of the skimmed stock to the vegetables. Stew until tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the flour mixed with a little water. Add this mixture to the soup kettle with the cooled stock.

  2. Season with sugar, cayenne, and salt. Boil for 5 minutes.

  3. Rub the soup through a colander. Rub the soup through a soup sieve. Heat almost to boiling. Serve.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  5. Beef + muttontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Slow cooking in water builds a rich, savory body into the stock.
Veal knuckle and bones
Release gelatin and body into the stock during long, slow simmering.
Carrots, turnips, and onions
Add sweetness and body to the soup as they stew until tender.
Butter
Fat that browns the vegetables, adding a toasted, rich flavor.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks with the stock.

The step that matters

Frying the vegetables until light brown. Browning builds savory flavor through the Maillard reaction, but overcooking turns them bitter and dark, so stop at light brown before adding stock.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, veal, mutton, ham, carrot, onion, butter):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Turnipthe original
  4. Tomatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, veal, mutton, ham, carrot, onion, butter. 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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