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Vegetable Soup

A hearty soup made with carrots, turnip, onion, leek, celery, parsley, butter, flour, water, and milk.

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

Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the vegetables and cut them into strips about the size of a short, thick match.

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter or fat in a stewpan and fry the vegetables very slowly until the fat is absorbed.

  2. Add the boiling water, ½ pint of milk, salt, and pepper, and simmer gently until the vegetables are tender, about 5 to 10 minutes.

  3. Mix the flour and the remaining milk smoothly together, then pour the mixture into the saucepan.

  4. Stir and cook for a few minutes, then 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.

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. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 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

Flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks, giving it body.
Butter or good fat
Carries the flavour of the vegetables and helps them soften while frying.
Milk
Adds richness and creaminess to the liquid.

The step that matters

Adding the flour mixture. Flour mixed smoothly with cold milk before it goes into the hot liquid helps prevent lumps. Stirring while it cooks lets the starch swell and thicken the soup fully.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, leek, celery, parsley, butter, flour):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, leek, celery, parsley, butter, flour. 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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