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Vegetable Soup

A soup made from a soup bone, cloves, onion, carrot, cabbage, turnip, and barley.

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

Make the stock

  1. Start by boiling the soup bone in cold water with the cloves.

  2. Once thoroughly cooked, strain the broth and set it aside to cool.

  3. The next day, remove the fat from the broth.

Finish the soup

  1. Prepare the vegetables: chop the onion, carrot, cabbage, and turnip.

  2. Boil the barley and vegetables separately, salting each.

  3. Add the boiled vegetables and barley to the prepared stock.

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. Cabbage + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + barleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  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

Soup bone
Gives the stock its body and meaty flavor as it simmers in water.
Barley
Thickens the soup slightly and adds chewy texture as it cooks.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma as it softens in the soup.
Carrot
Contributes natural sweetness and color to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Remove the fat from the broth. Fat that solidifies on chilled stock is easy to remove once cold, while leftover fat in the broth can make the soup greasy and heavy on the palate.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, carrot, cabbage, turnip, barley. 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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