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Spring Soup

A vegetable soup made with onions, butter, flour, stock, lettuce, sorrel, watercress, cucumber, peas, cream, egg yolks, and chervil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Sorrel and watercress share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Spring Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Smother sliced onions in butter over low heat in a pot.

  2. Add flour and stir continuously for 5 minutes without browning.

  3. Moisten with chicken or veal stock and let simmer for 30 minutes.

  4. Skim off any fat and scum that rises to the surface.

Add the greens and finish

  1. Add shredded lettuce, sorrel, watercress, and cucumber, and cook for another 30 minutes.

  2. Stir in cooked green peas, season with salt, sugar, and nutmeg.

  3. Before serving, bind the soup with cream and egg yolks, and add chervil.

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 + watercresstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Lettuce + watercresstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together307 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Sorrel + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together119 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Lettuce + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,409 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

Onions
Soften and build a sweet, savory flavor base as they cook slowly in butter.
Butter
Carries the onions as they soften and adds richness to the soup.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a body-giving base when stirred into the butter and onions.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth texture when stirred in before serving.
Egg yolks
Bind with the cream to thicken and enrich the soup without boiling it.
Sorrel
Adds a bright, sour acidity that contrasts with the mild greens and cream.

The step that matters

Binding with cream and egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently but can curdle or scramble if the soup boils after they are added. Stir the yolks and cream in off the heat or over very low heat, and keep the soup below a simmer.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, chicken, lettuce, sorrel, watercress, cucumber):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, chicken, lettuce, sorrel, watercress, cucumber. 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.

More spring soup recipes

Thick 3 See all 29 →

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