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Vegetable Soup

A hearty soup made with beef stock, vegetables, and rice, seasoned with spices and Worcestershire sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Vegetable Soup

Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Prepare a rich beef stock from marrow bones and meat, skimming off all grease.

Cook the soup

  1. Add onions, celery, turnips, cabbage, and the spice bag to the stock.

  2. Cook the stock with those ingredients for 20 minutes.

  3. Cook carrots separately for 20 minutes. Drain the carrots.

  4. Add the carrots, potatoes, tomatoes, parsley, and rice to the soup.

  5. Simmer the soup for another 20 minutes.

  6. Add salt, pepper, and Worcestershire sauce.

  7. Do not let it boil hard.

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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 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 stock
Forms the savoury liquid base that carries all the other ingredients.
Shin of beef
Adds meaty flavour to the stock through the marrow bones and meat used to make it.
Potatoes
Soften during simmering and thicken the soup slightly as their starch releases.
Rice
Absorbs liquid and thickens the soup as it cooks.
Canned tomatoes
Add acidity and body, giving the soup its colour and tangy depth.

The step that matters

Do not let it boil hard. A hard boil makes the meat and stock cloudy and can toughen the meat and break down the vegetables. A gentle simmer keeps the broth clear and the vegetables tender.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

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