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Swiss Soup

A hearty soup made with spinach, chervil, cabbage, onions, marjoram, butter, flour, water or broth, egg yolks, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Spinach and chervil share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Swiss Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Wash the spinach and chervil.

  2. Chop the spinach and chervil.

  3. Pound the cabbage stalks.

  4. Slice the onions and marjoram finely.

  5. Press out the juice from the vegetables until dry.

Make the soup

  1. Heat the butter in a pan.

  2. Sauté the vegetables until soft, but not watery.

  3. Stir in the flour.

  4. Gradually add enough water or broth to make soup.

  5. Add salt.

  6. Boil for 15 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Mix the egg yolks with the cream in a tureen.

  2. Add the boiling soup to the mixture.

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 + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together78 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Chervil + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together38 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Chervil + cabbagetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together113 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Spinach + cabbagetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together190 recipes

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

  5. Spinach + marjoramtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together60 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Spinach
Provides the main green vegetable body and flavour of the soup.
Onions
Soften during sautéing to build sweetness and savoury depth.
Butter
Carries the vegetables in the pan and adds richness to the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it combines with the butter and liquid.
Egg yolks
Enrich the soup and thicken it gently when stirred into the hot liquid.
Cream
Adds richness and smoothness, mellowing the finished soup.

The step that matters

Add the boiling soup to the mixture. Egg yolks thicken only gently with heat. Pouring boiling soup in slowly while whisking warms the yolks and cream evenly, helping prevent them from scrambling into lumps.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (spinach, chervil, cabbage, marjoram, butter, flour, egg):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against spinach, chervil, cabbage, marjoram, butter, flour, egg. 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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