Skip to main content
Main

Spring Soup

A vegetable soup made with peas, asparagus, cauliflower, turnip, carrot, celery, green beans, tomato, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Spring Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Cook all the vegetables except the peas and tomato in water to cover for 1 hour.

Make the roux and thicken

  1. In a separate pan, melt the butter and mix in the flour until smooth but not browned.

  2. Stir the butter-flour mixture into the heated soup stock until boiling.

  3. Add the chopped tomato and simmer gently for 15 minutes.

Finish the soup

  1. Strain the soup, then add the peas and cooked vegetables back into the strained soup.

  2. Simmer again for 30 minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Cauliflower + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together286 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Asparagus + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together163 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Peas + green beanstop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together54 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth soup body when cooked with butter.
Butter
Carries the flour for the roux and adds richness to the soup.
Tomato
Adds acidity and body as it simmers into the stock.
Asparagus heads
Provides the main vegetable flavour and texture after long simmering.
Cauliflower florets
Adds bulk and mild flavour to the soup as it cooks down.

The step that matters

Mixing the butter-flour roux. Flour must be cooked smooth in the butter without browning; if it browns, its thickening power and flavour change, and lumps form if it is not blended well before adding the stock.

Swap the green beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, asparagus, cauliflower, turnip, carrot, butter, celery):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Green beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, asparagus, cauliflower, turnip, carrot, butter, 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.

More vegetable soup recipes

Spring 46Beef 45Winter 31French 11Lentil 9Clear 8 See all 425 →

You might also like

Green PeasGreen Peas229 recipesGreen Peas SoupGreen Peas Soup35 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesGreen Pea SoupGreen Pea Soup181 recipes