Skip to main content
Main

Salsify Soup

A creamy soup made with sliced salsify, onions, leeks, and butter, finished with milk and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Salsify Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Trim, scrape, and wash the salsify.

  2. Drain and slice it very thin.

  3. Fry the salsify in a saucepan with butter until tender.

  4. Add flour and mix well while heating through.

Make the soup

  1. Add broth or water, onions, leeks, and parsley.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  3. Cover and let boil slowly for 1 hour.

  4. Press the mixture through a sieve and then through a strainer back into the saucepan.

  5. Add butter, milk, and cream.

  6. Stir constantly while boiling for 5 minutes.

  7. Serve in a hot tureen with croutons.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Onion + leektop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,326 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

  4. Leek + parsleytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together759 recipes

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

  5. Leek + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together152 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Salsify
Forms the main body of the soup and gives it its earthy, mildly sweet flavour.
Flour
Thickens the broth, giving the soup body as it heats.
Leeks
Add a mild onion-like sweetness that builds the soup's base flavour.
Onions
Contribute savoury sweetness and aroma as they cook slowly into the base.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the finished soup.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mellows the soup while keeping it lighter than cream alone.

The step that matters

Stir constantly while boiling the finished soup with milk and cream. Milk and cream contain proteins and sugars that can scorch or curdle on the bottom of the pan when heated hard. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly and keeps the soup smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, leek, parsley, pepper, nutmeg, milk):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, leek, parsley, pepper, nutmeg, milk. 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.

You might also like

Leek SoupLeek Soup31 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes