Skip to main content
Main

Soupe Maigre

A light vegetable soup made with peas, onions, celery, carrot, turnips, mint, spinach, lettuce, butter, sugar, and optional asparagus.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Soupe Maigre

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Combine dried peas, onions, celery, carrot, turnips, mint, spinach, and cold water in a large pot.

  2. Stew the mixture until everything is quite soft.

  3. Pass the mixture through a sieve or food mill.

  4. Return the pulp and water to the pot.

  5. Add the sliced lettuce, butter, and sugar to the pot.

  6. Boil quickly for about 15 minutes.

Serve

  1. Boil the asparagus tips separately until tender.

  2. Drain the asparagus and add them when serving the soup.

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

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

  2. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Turnip + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together526 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + spinachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together320 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

Dried peas
Form the main body and thicken the soup as they break down into pulp.
Butter
Adds fat for a smoother, richer mouthfeel in the finished soup.
Sugar
Adds a touch of sweetness that balances the vegetable flavors.
Lettuce
Contributes fresh, mild green flavor and color when added near the end.

The step that matters

Stew until everything is quite soft. The vegetables must be fully softened so the sieve or food mill can turn them into a smooth pulp. Under-cooked pieces will stay gritty and make the soup grainy.

Swap the mint

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, onion, celery, carrot, turnip, spinach, lettuce):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, onion, celery, carrot, turnip, 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.

You might also like

Green PeasGreen Peas229 recipesAsparagus SoupAsparagus Soup179 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipes