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Spring Soup

A hearty veal soup with calves' feet, peas, asparagus, spinach, and optional ham, finished with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Asparagus and spinach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 274 recipes. Both carry 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol, which smells clove, smoky. The science ↓

Spring Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Break the veal bones and cut the veal into pieces.

  2. Combine veal and calves' feet in a soup pot with water.

  3. Add ham if using, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  4. Simmer over moderate heat for several hours, skimming regularly.

  5. Strain the stock and store in a stone pan if not using immediately.

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Boil the green peas and asparagus tops until tender.

  2. Pound spinach to extract juice.

Finish the soup

  1. Heat the stock, add peas, asparagus, and spinach juice.

  2. Incorporate butter rolled in flour, bring to a boil, 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.

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. Asparagus + spinachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together274 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  2. Peas + asparagustop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together808 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + spinachtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Peas + spinachtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together550 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + asparagustop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,968 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

Butter
Enriches the soup with fat and richness, and the flour coating helps thicken it.
Green peas
Add body, sweetness and a fresh vegetable flavour to the soup.
Asparagus tops
Add a grassy flavour and tender texture to the soup.
Calves' feet
Release gelatin into the stock, giving it body and a silky mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Incorporate butter rolled in flour, bring to a boil, then serve.. Flour-coated butter needs to be stirred in well so it disperses without lumps. Bringing the soup to a boil cooks out the raw flour taste and thickens the liquid, while overboiling can break the emulsion of the butter.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, ham, pepper, asparagus, spinach, butter, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, pepper, asparagus, spinach, 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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