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Spring Soup

A hearty soup of veal, ham, peas, turnips, leek, celery, asparagus, cabbage lettuce, mint, and spinach.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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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 ↓

Spring Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Combine veal, ham, peas, turnips, leek, and celery in a large pot with 4 quarts of soft water.

  2. Boil until the meat releases its juices and the peas are soft.

  3. Remove the meat and vegetables, then strain the peas through a sieve.

Finish the soup

  1. Season the soup with pepper and coarse sea salt to taste.

  2. Add chopped asparagus, cabbage lettuce hearts, and mint to the soup and simmer until tender.

  3. If the soup is too thick, add broth; if too thin, mix in flour and water.

  4. For a greener color, add strained spinach juice but do not boil.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Leek + asparagustop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together73 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + asparagustop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together328 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Peas + asparagustop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together808 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Whole white peas
Break down while boiling to thicken the soup and give it body.
Veal knuckle
Releases juices and gelatin during boiling to add savory depth to the broth.
Asparagus
Adds tender texture and fresh vegetable flavor to the finished soup.
Cabbage lettuce hearts
Soften during simmering, adding mild vegetable flavor and tender body.
Turnips
Soften during boiling, adding mild sweetness and earthy flavor to the base.

The step that matters

Adding spinach juice without boiling. Chlorophyll turns olive-brown when heated, so boiling dulls the green color. Adding strained spinach juice off the boil keeps the color bright.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, ham, turnip, leek, celery, pepper, asparagus):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, turnip, leek, celery, pepper, 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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