Skip to main content
Main

Cottage Soups

A hearty beef and vegetable soup with potatoes, rice, carrots, turnips, cabbage, and onions, simmered in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 Soups

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Fry the beef, bacon, cabbage, and onions in butter or dripping until browned.

  2. Add 1 gallon of water and bring to a gentle simmer.

Cook the soup

  1. Stir in the carrots and cook for 3 hours.

  2. Add the turnips and rice towards the end of cooking until tender.

  3. Mash the potatoes and pass through a colander into the soup.

  4. Season with salt and pepper, and keep covered.

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. Turnip + cabbagetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Mealy potatoes
Break down when mashed and pressed through, thickening the broth to a smooth body.
Rice
Absorbs liquid and swells during simmering, adding body to the soup.
Lean beef
Browning and simmering develop savoury meaty flavour and give the soup substance.
Bacon
Rendered fat and browned bits add smoky, savoury depth to the base.
Carrots
Long simmering softens them and adds natural sweetness to the broth.

The step that matters

Pressing the mashed potatoes through the colander. Mealy potatoes break down into starch that thickens the broth. Pass them through once mashed so no lumps remain, and stir well so the starch disperses evenly instead of clumping.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

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

You might also like

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