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Autumn Soup

A vegetable soup made with leeks, celery, lettuce, peas, and a flour-thickened broth, served with fried bread crusts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Leek and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 217 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Autumn Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and slice the leeks, celery, and lettuce.

Make the soup

  1. Add them to boiling broth along with the peas, sugar, and pepper.

  2. Mix the flour with cold stock until smooth, then stir into the broth.

  3. Boil the mixture for 1.5 hours, stirring occasionally.

Serve

  1. Pour the soup into a tureen and serve with crispy fried bread crusts.

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. Leek + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together217 recipes

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

  2. Leek + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Lettuce + peastop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,293 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

Leeks
Provide the main savoury body and mild onion flavour of the soup.
Celery
Adds aromatic flavour and fibrous texture as it softens during the long simmer.
Lettuce
Softens into the soup, adding body and a gentle vegetable flavour.
Young peas
Add sweetness and a fresh, green vegetable flavour to the soup.
Flour
Thickens the cold stock and broth, giving the soup a smooth, body-rich texture.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the broth. Flour mixed with cold stock first forms a smooth slurry; adding it dry or to hot liquid causes lumps that do not fully dissolve. Stirring during the long boil also keeps the thickened soup from scorching on the bottom of the pot.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (leek, celery, lettuce, sugar, pepper, flour, bread):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against leek, celery, lettuce, sugar, pepper, flour, bread. 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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