Skip to main content

Spring Soup

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Spring Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cut the roots into small pieces.

  2. Chop the spinach, cabbage-lettuce, and cucumbers.

  3. Cut the asparagus into 1-inch pieces and chop the tarragon and chervil.

  4. Cut the French beans into small pieces.

  5. Boil all the green ingredients in water for a few minutes.

  6. Combine the boiled greens with the consommé stock and let them cook until tender.

  7. If using, add small pieces of boiled cauliflower to the soup tureen.

  8. Pour the hot soup over the cauliflower in the tureen and season to taste.

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. Tarragon + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together824 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + sorreltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together179 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Endivefits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, spinach, lettuce, sorrel, tarragon, chervil. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

More spring vegetable soup recipes

Thick 3 See all 46 →

You might also like

Cucumber PicklesCucumber Pickles25 recipesVegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipes