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Vegetable Soup

A clear soup made with bone, carrots, onion, cabbage, turnip, potato, thickened with corn starch, seasoned with salt, pepper, butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 broth

  1. In a large pot, combine the soup bone, carrot, onion, cabbage, turnip, and potato with enough water to cover the ingredients.

  2. Boil until the vegetables are tender.

  3. Strain the broth and return it to the pot.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the corn starch and cook until thickened.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, and butter.

  3. Serve hot with croutons or crackers.

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

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

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

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

  5. Potato + corntop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together938 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Potato
Breaks down while simmering, adding body and starch to the broth.
Corn starch
Thickens the broth when stirred in and cooked.
Soup bone
Releases flavour and gelatin into the water during the long boil.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounder mouthfeel to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Stir in the corn starch and cook until thickened. Cornstarch must be cooked after it is stirred into hot liquid so the starch granules swell and gelatinize; if it is undercooked, the soup stays thin and may taste floury.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

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