Skip to main content
Soup

Vegetable Soup, Summer

A light soup of mixed summer vegetables simmered in veal stock with butter, herbs, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sorrel and chervil 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 ↓

Vegetable Soup, Summer

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop the roots of the vegetables into small pieces.

  2. Slice the bulbs thinly.

Make the soup

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter and add the chopped vegetables.

  2. Stir with a wooden spoon until they begin to soften, avoiding browning.

  3. Pour in the veal stock and season with salt, cayenne, and nutmeg.

  4. Skim the soup and simmer gently until the vegetables are tender.

  5. Stir in the boiling cream.

  6. If using milk and egg yolk, boil the milk, strain it into the soup, and mix the egg yolk with a spoonful of soup before adding it gradually.

  7. Ensure the soup is hot but not boiling when serving.

  8. Serve immediately.

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. Sorrel + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together247 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lettuce + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together396 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Lettuce + sorreltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together317 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Sorrel + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together112 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal stock
Forms the savoury liquid base that carries the vegetable flavour.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky texture to the finished soup.
Egg yolk
Thickens the soup gently and adds richness when milk is used instead of cream.
Mixed summer vegetables
Provide the main body, sweetness and flavour of the soup.

The step that matters

Stirring the vegetables while they soften. Vegetables that brown in the butter turn bitter and darken the delicate colour of the soup, so they should soften gently without colouring.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, onion, turnip, carrot, sorrel, leek, chervil):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, onion, turnip, carrot, sorrel, leek, chervil. 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.

You might also like

Meatless Green Pea SoupMeatless Green Pea Soup22 recipesIndian Spiced Potato Soup with Tofu and SpinachIndian Spiced Potato Soup with Tofu and Spinach448 recipesClear Carrot and Bottle Gourd SoupClear Carrot and Bottle Gourd Soup65 recipesMock Bisque SoupMock Bisque Soup51 recipes