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Herb Soup

A vegetable soup made with chervil, parsley, spinach, sorrel, cabbage, carrots, butter, pepper, salt, clear soup, nutmeg, egg yolks, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Chervil and sorrel match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 247 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Herb Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash, drain, and finely shred the chervil, parsley, spinach, sorrel, and cabbage lettuces.

  2. In a stewpan, combine the shredded herbs with butter, sliced carrots, pepper, and salt.

Cook the soup

  1. Steam the mixture for 30 minutes, shaking the pan occasionally to prevent burning.

  2. Pour in the clear soup and simmer for 20 minutes.

  3. Add a little grated nutmeg.

  4. Strain the soup.

Finish and serve

  1. Beat the egg yolks with milk and stir gently into the soup just before serving.

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. Chervil + sorreltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together247 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Chervil + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together396 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Sorrel + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together317 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Spinach + sorreltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together204 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the soup and add richness when gently stirred in off the heat.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the herbs soften as they steam.
Milk
Dilutes the yolks and adds creaminess to the finished soup.
Spinach
Contributes body and a green, earthy flavour to the soup base.
Cabbage lettuces
Provides leafy bulk and mild sweetness as they cook down.

The step that matters

Stir the egg yolk and milk mixture in gently just before serving. Egg yolks thicken when heated, but if the soup is too hot or boils after they are added, they can scramble and turn grainy. Adding them off the heat and stirring gently keeps the soup smooth and silky.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chervil, parsley, spinach, sorrel, lettuce, butter, carrot):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chervil, parsley, spinach, sorrel, lettuce, butter, carrot. 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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