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Vegetable Soup

A creamy vegetable soup made with beef stock, milk, eggs, cabbage, turnips, and potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Vegetable Soup

Why it works: Cabbage and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 897 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Thicken the milk with corn starch.

  3. Cook the mixture until it loses its raw taste.

  4. Pour the boiling mixture over the beaten eggs.

  5. Beat the mixture for a few moments.

  6. Place the mixture in a tureen.

Cook the vegetables

  1. Boil the cabbage and turnips for half an hour.

  2. Add the boiled cabbage and turnips to the broth.

Combine and season

  1. Add the broth and potatoes to the mixture.

  2. Season the mixture with salt, pepper, and celery salt.

  3. Boil for an additional half hour.

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. Cabbage + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Corn + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together938 recipes

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

  3. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  4. Turnip + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Beaten eggs set when heated, giving the soup body and a thickened, creamy texture.
Corn starch
Starch swells in hot milk, thickening the mixture so it coats the spoon.
Milk
Provides the creamy base that the thickened custard mixture is built on.
Beef stock
Forms the main savory liquid that carries the vegetables and flavour through the soup.
Potatoes
Starchy pieces soften during boiling, adding body and substance to the soup.
Cabbage
Softens during boiling, adding mild sweetness and bulk to the broth.

The step that matters

Pouring the boiling milk over the beaten eggs. Adding hot liquid to eggs too quickly can scramble them. Pour slowly while whisking, so the eggs warm gradually and thicken smoothly instead of curdling.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, corn, egg, beef, cabbage, potato, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, corn, egg, beef, cabbage, potato, 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.

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