Skip to main content
Main

Cottage Soup

A hearty beef and vegetable soup with bacon, potatoes, rice, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Cottage Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the beef into thin slices and the bacon into cubes.

  2. Slice the onion, carrots, and turnip.

  3. Prepare the potatoes; if large, cut them in half.

Make the soup

  1. Melt the dripping in a large pot.

  2. Fry the bacon, beef, and onion until browned.

  3. Add the sliced vegetables, water, salt, and pepper.

  4. Cover and simmer for about 1 hour.

  5. Add the potatoes to the soup.

  6. After 30 minutes, sprinkle in the rice.

  7. Cook gently for another 30 minutes.

  8. Once the potatoes and rice are tender, season the soup to taste and serve.

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. 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. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 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

Beef
Browning and slow simmering give the soup its savoury, meaty flavour and body.
Potatoes
Break down slightly as they cook, thickening the broth and adding starchy body.
Rice
Releases starch during simmering, helping to thicken the soup.
Bacon
Renders fat and browns, adding smoky, savoury depth to the base.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and colour as they soften in the broth.

The step that matters

Frying the bacon, beef, and onion until browned. Browning creates Maillard reactions that build deep savoury flavour; pale, steamed meat gives a flat, grey-tasting broth.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Tomatofits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, carrot, potato, rice, 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.

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipes