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Spinach Soup

A soup made from spinach, parsley, carrots, turnips, celery, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Spinach Soup

Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Spinach Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Stew spinach, parsley, carrots, turnips, and celery in 1 pint of water until soft.

  2. Rub the mixture through a coarse sieve.

  3. Add 1 quart of hot water and boil for 20 minutes.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Spinach + turniptop 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

Spinach
Forms the bulk and body of the soup, giving it its green colour and vegetal flavour.
Parsley
Adds fresh, herbal aroma and a little extra green flavour to the soup.
Carrots
Contribute natural sweetness and body once softened and pureed through the sieve.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and thickness as they soften and break down into the purée.
Root celery
Adds savory, aromatic depth that rounds out the flavour of the vegetables.

The step that matters

Rubbing the mixture through a coarse sieve. The vegetables must be fully softened before sieving, because firm pieces resist passing through and leave a grainy texture. Pressing the cooked solids through breaks down their cell walls, producing a smoother, thicker soup.

Swap the spinach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, carrot, turnip, celery):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Spinachthe original

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