Why it works: Mustard and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓
Spring Soup
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Cut the vegetables into fancy shapes or thin shreds about 1 inch long using small vegetable scoops.
Bring a pot of water to a boil and add the vegetables for 1-2 minutes.
Drain the vegetables and transfer them to another saucepan with enough boiling clear stock.
Cook and serve
Boil gently until the vegetables are tender, tasting to adjust seasoning as needed.
Serve very hot.
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.
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Mustard + lettucetop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together1,356 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Turnip + lettucetop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together526 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Turnip + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together286 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together8,002 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Cauliflower + asparagustop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together163 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Early vegetables
- Provide the main body, colour and fresh flavour of the soup.
- Sorrel
- Adds a sharp, acidic note that brightens the soup.
The step that matters
Boil gently until the vegetables are tender. Gentle heat cooks the vegetables evenly while keeping their shapes intact; a hard boil breaks them apart and clouds the clear stock.
Swap the onion
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, carrot, mustard, cauliflower, lettuce, peas, asparagus):
- Beetrootfits better
- Broccolifits better
- Endivefits better
- Onionthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, carrot, mustard, cauliflower, lettuce, peas, asparagus. 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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