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Green-leaf Vegetable Soup

A soup made from green-leaf vegetables, bread, milk, butter, salt, and optional onion and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Green-leaf Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and dry the greens.

  2. Chop the greens finely using a food chopper with the finest blade.

  3. Add the bread and onion to the chopper. Mix well to avoid hard masses.

Make the soup

  1. Combine the chopped greens, bread, and milk.

  2. Let the mixture sit for at least 30 minutes to soften the bread.

  3. Heat the mixture to boiling.

  4. Cook for about 2 minutes.

  5. Stir in the butter.

  6. Stir in the salt.

  7. Add lemon juice for flavor if desired.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Lettuce + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

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

  4. Lettuce + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,559 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Green-leaf vegetables
Provide the main body of flavour and green colour in the soup.
Bread
Softens and thickens the soup, giving it a smoother, creamier body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base and adds richness and softness to the soup.
Butter
Adds fat for richer flavour and a smoother mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Chop the bread and greens finely and mix well. Bread that is not broken up evenly forms hard lumps that stay in the finished soup. Fine chopping and thorough mixing spread the bread through the milk so it softens and blends into a smooth texture.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, lettuce, bread, butter, lemon):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, lettuce, bread, butter, lemon. 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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