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Clear Spring Soup

A clear vegetable soup made with consomme, peas, asparagus, cauliflower, carrots, turnips, onions, salt, cayenne pepper, and burnt sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 286 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Clear Spring Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the consomme

  1. Bring the consomme to a boil in a pot.

  2. Skim the surface to remove impurities.

  3. Season with salt and cayenne pepper, then add burnt sugar for color and flavor.

Cook and serve

  1. Cook the vegetables separately until tender.

  2. Drain the vegetables and place them in a tureen.

  3. Pour the hot consomme over the vegetables.

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. Cauliflower + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together286 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Asparagus + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together163 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Asparagus + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together328 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Peas + asparagustop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together808 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Consomme
Forms the clear, flavorful broth that makes up most of the soup.
Green peas
Add sweetness and a fresh green color with tender texture.
Asparagus
Adds a delicate vegetable flavor and tender bite.
Carrots
Contribute natural sweetness and soft texture after cooking.
Burnt sugar
Deepens the broth's color and adds a caramel note.

The step that matters

Skimming the consomme before seasoning. Skimming removes coagulated particles and fat from the surface, so the broth stays clear and clean-tasting rather than cloudy or greasy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, asparagus, cauliflower, carrot, turnip, pepper, sugar):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, asparagus, cauliflower, carrot, turnip, pepper, sugar. 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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