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Vegetable Soup

A hearty vegetable soup made with butter, flour, water, salt, peas, beans, carrots, cauliflower, celery, onion, parsley, kohlrabi, potatoes, squash, black‑eyed peas, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Vegetable Soup

Why it works: Carrot and celery 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 broth

  1. Melt the butter in a pot over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the flour until it turns a dark yellow.

  3. Pour in the boiling water and add salt.

Cook and finish

  1. Add all the prepared vegetables and boil until tender.

  2. Just before serving, stir in the egg yolks.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Beans + cauliflowertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Beans + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,443 recipes

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

  4. Peas + cauliflowertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together313 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Peas + beanstop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together949 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat and richness to the base of the soup.
Flour
Thickens the butter base slightly, giving the broth more body.
Egg yolks
Enriches and slightly thickens the soup when stirred in at the end.
Green peas
Add sweetness and a tender texture to the soup.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if the soup is too hot or boiling when they go in. Adding them just before serving, off the boil, lets them thicken gently and stay smooth.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, beans, carrot, cauliflower, celery, onion):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Almondfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, beans, carrot, cauliflower, celery, onion. 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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