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Vegetable Curry Soup

A hearty soup of potatoes, cucumber, onions, cabbage, bread crusts, and bacon rinds flavored with curry powder, coconut cream, and lime.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Lime and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,491 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Vegetable Curry Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. In a large pot, combine the potatoes, cucumber, onions, cabbage, bread crusts, and bacon rinds.

  2. Cover the ingredients with boiling water and cook until soft.

  3. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve, retaining the liquid.

Season and finish

  1. Stir in the curry powder, sugar, chutney, lime juice, pepper, and salt.

  2. Add the cream and milk from the grated coconut, and bring to a boil.

  3. Serve hot with boiled rice and sprinkle fried onions on top.

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.

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. Lime + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,491 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Cucumber + limetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together649 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  5. Cucumber + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together722 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Break down when cooked, thickening the soup with body and smoothness.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, adding savoury depth to the base.
Coconut cream and milk
Add richness and fat, softening the curry's heat and rounding the flavour.
Curry powder
Provides the aromatic spice blend that defines the soup's flavour.
Lime juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, spiced soup.

The step that matters

Passing the cooked mixture through a fine sieve. Pressing the soft vegetables through a fine sieve removes fibrous bits and gives the soup a smooth texture. Retaining the cooking liquid keeps flavour and body, so the soup isn't thin or grainy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, cucumber, cabbage, bread, sugar, lime, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, cucumber, cabbage, bread, sugar, lime, 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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