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Vegetable Soup

A hearty soup made with peas, celery, spinach, lettuce, leeks, and young peas, flavored with mint, sweet herbs, mace, cloves, white pepper, and butter.

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

Why it works: Spinach and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 427 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pea base

  1. Boil the peas in soft water with mint, sweet herbs, mace, cloves, and white pepper until soft.

  2. Strain and pulp the peas through a coarse sieve.

Finish the soup

  1. In a stewpan, combine the soup with celery, pulped peas, spinach, lettuce, leeks, young peas, and salt.

  2. Stew gently until only 2 quarts of liquid remain and the celery is tender.

  3. Add butter rolled in flour about 15 minutes before removing from heat.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Spinach + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together427 recipes

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

  2. Peas + minttop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,137 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Peas + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,293 recipes

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

  5. Celery + spinachtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together616 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

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

What each ingredient does

Old green peas
Provide the main body and flavour of the soup once boiled and pulped.
Flour
Thickens the soup when rolled with butter and stirred in near the end.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Celery
Adds savory flavour and tender vegetable texture as it stews.
Young peas
Add fresh sweetness and bright pea flavour to the soup.

The step that matters

Stew until reduced to 2 quarts. Stewing gently concentrates the flavour and thickens the soup, while the celery softens fully. Simmering too hard can break down the vegetables and cloud the texture, so the reduction should be gradual.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, mint, mace, clove, celery, spinach, lettuce):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, mint, mace, clove, celery, spinach, lettuce. 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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