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Vegetable Soup

A simple soup made with meat broth, carrots, onions, potatoes, turnips, and tomatoes, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

  1. Skim the fat from the meat broth.

  2. Add the sliced carrots to the broth and boil for 20 minutes.

  3. Add the chopped onions, diced potatoes, diced turnips, and sliced tomatoes.

  4. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

  5. Cook until all vegetables are tender.

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

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

  3. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Potato + tomatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,798 recipes

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

  5. Onion + turniptop 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 broth
Provides the liquid base and the savory flavor of the soup.
Carrots
Add sweetness and firm texture that holds up during boiling.
Potatoes
Soften as they cook and thicken the broth slightly through their starch.
Turnips
Add a mildly peppery flavor and tender bite to the soup.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and fresh flavor that brightens the broth.

The step that matters

Cook until all vegetables are tender. Vegetables added at different times need enough simmering to soften fully. Undercooked potatoes and turnips stay firm and starchy, while overcooking can make the carrots and tomatoes mushy.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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