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Palestine Soup

A creamy vegetable soup with carrots, turnips, onions, leeks, celery, lettuce, herbs, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 21 ingredients
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Palestine Soup

Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Palestine Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a pot, toss equal parts of chopped carrots, turnips, onions, leeks, and celery in plenty of butter for 30 minutes.

  2. Add shredded lettuce, parsley, chervil, thyme, marjoram, and tarragon; toss for a few more minutes.

  3. Pour in enough water to cover the vegetables, then season with pepper, salt, cloves, mace, and a pinch of sugar.

  4. Let the mixture stew gently for several hours, then strain through a cloth.

Finish and serve

  1. For serving, stir in cream and bring to a boil; serve with fried bread sippets.

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. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 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

Butter
Softens the vegetables gently and carries their flavour into the soup.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body as they soften and break down during stewing.
Onions
Build savoury depth as they soften and caramelise slightly in butter.
Lettuce
Adds a mild, delicate vegetable flavour and light body to the broth.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture when stirred in at serving.
Bread
Fried sippets add crunch contrasting with the smooth soup.

The step that matters

Stewing and straining. Long gentle stewing lets the vegetables release their flavour, and straining through a cloth removes fibres for a smooth texture. Boiling the cream too hard after adding it can cause it to separate, so keep it at a gentle heat.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, bread, butter, carrot, turnip, leek, celery):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, bread, butter, carrot, turnip, leek, celery. 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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