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Jordanian Spring Greens Soup

A soup made with a mix of spring greens, rice, and vegetables simmered in broth.

From the Recipes Wiki (Fandom) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 29,030 recipes mention both. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Directions

Build the base

  1. Heat the olive oil in a large soup pot over medium‑low heat, add the onion and leek, and sauté until limp and fragrant, about 8 to 10 minutes, stirring now and then.

  2. Add the garlic and fennel and cook 5 minutes more.

  3. Cut the chard stems into small dice and add them to the pot with the other vegetables.

  4. Season with salt and continue to cook until all of the vegetables are tender, about 10 minutes more.

Add rice and simmer

  1. Add 6 cups water and stir in the rice and the red pepper flakes.

  2. Increase the heat to medium and simmer for 10 minutes.

Prepare and add the greens

  1. Cut the chard into 1/2‑inch crosswise slices.

  2. If using stinging nettles, use tongs to plunge them into boiling salted water, cook for 30 seconds and rinse in cool water.

  3. Stack the nettles and cut them into 1/4‑inch wide crosswise slices.

  4. Cut the sorrel and beet or turnip greens into thin crosswise slices.

  5. If the spinach leaves are small, leave them whole; if they are large, cut them as you have cut the other greens.

  6. Add the greens and stir until they are wilted.

  7. Add 2 cups water and simmer 10 minutes.

  8. Taste, correct for salt and season generously with black pepper.

Recipe from the Recipes Wiki (Fandom).

This recipe comes from the Recipes Wiki on Fandom and is licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Our formatting and summaries are shared under the same licence.

Steps grouped into stages for easier reading; the method is the source's own.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together29,030 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Olive + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together23,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Garlic + chardtop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together246 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Olive + chardtop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together307 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,326 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Olive oil
Carries the aromatics and gives the soup a rich, smooth fat base.
Italian rice
Starch from the rice thickens the soup and gives it body as it simmers.
Spring greens
Supply the main green flavour and bulk, wilting down into the broth.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it cooks, forming the flavour base of the soup.
Leek
Adds a mild, sweet onion-like flavour as it turns tender in the fat.

The step that matters

Sautéing the onion and leek. Cooking them slowly over medium-low heat until limp and sweet builds the flavour base; rushing or browning them harshly leaves a harsh taste in the broth.

Flavor stand-ins for the leek

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (olive, onion, garlic, fennel, chard, rice, pepper):

  1. Tomatobetter flavor fit
  2. Potatobetter flavor fit
  3. Spinachbetter flavor fit
  4. Leekthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, onion, garlic, fennel, chard, rice, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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