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Vegetable Soup

A hearty soup made with bone broth, rice, potatoes, tomatoes, celery root, spaghetti, onions, cabbage or corn, and parsley.

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

Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Wash the soup bone and place it in a pot with cold water, salt, and pepper.

  2. Bring to a boil and simmer for 2 hours.

  3. Remove the bone and strain the broth.

Finish the soup

  1. Add the vegetables to the boiling stock and cook for an additional 45 minutes.

  2. Stir in chopped parsley just before serving.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  4. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Soup bone
Releases flavor and body into the water as it simmers.
Rice
Thickens the broth slightly as its starch releases during cooking.
Irish potato
Adds starch that softens and gives the soup body.
Spaghetti
Adds starch and bulk, softening as it cooks in the broth.

The step that matters

Add the vegetables to the boiling stock. Adding them to a rolling boil keeps the stock at a steady temperature so the vegetables cook through evenly. Cooking them too long can turn them mushy and cloud the broth.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, rice, potato, tomato, celery, onion, parsley):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, rice, potato, tomato, celery, onion, parsley. 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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