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Springtime Soup

A light soup of lettuce, peas, onion, and stock thickened with egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Springtime Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and brown the sliced onion.

  2. Add the peas, cover with water, and season with salt and pepper.

  3. Cook until tender.

Finish the soup

  1. Bring the stock to a boil.

  2. Beat the egg yolks with ½ cup of the vegetable cooking liquid.

  3. Stir the egg mixture into the hot stock just 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.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Lettuce + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Lettuce + peastop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,293 recipes

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

  4. Lettuce + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the soup and give it a smooth, creamy body when gently heated.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour while browning the onion.
Onion
Browning adds a sweet, savoury depth to the soup base.
Peas
Provide the main body and sweet, green flavour of the soup.
Lettuce
Adds bulk and a mild, fresh vegetable flavour to the soup.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg mixture into the hot stock. Egg yolks scramble if they get too hot too fast. Adding the beaten yolks to hot liquid just before removing it from heat, and stirring constantly, lets them thicken smoothly without curdling.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, butter, peas, pepper, parsley, egg):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, butter, peas, pepper, parsley, 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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