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Herb Soup

A vegetable soup made with spinach, sorrel, lettuce, leek, potatoes, bread, butter, chervil, and water, simmered and served with optional egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Chervil and sorrel 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 ↓

Herb Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and shred the sorrel, spinach, and lettuce, ensuring they are fresh and tender.

  2. Cut the washed leek into thin slices.

Cook the soup

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter and cook the leek for 15 minutes without browning.

  2. Add the potatoes, salt, and boiling water to the stewpan.

  3. Bring the mixture to a quick boil, then reduce the heat to simmer gently for 1 hour.

  4. After an hour, crush the potatoes with a fork and add the chervil, simmering for an additional 5 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Transfer the soup to a tureen, add the crisped bread, and serve.

  2. For a smoother texture, strain the soup through a puree sieve, return it to heat, and pour over 2 beaten egg yolks mixed with 2 tablespoons of milk.

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. Chervil + sorreltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together247 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Chervil + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together396 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Sorrel + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together317 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Sorrel + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together112 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Spinach + sorreltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together204 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

Potatoes
Break down when crushed, thickening the soup and giving it a full body.
Sorrel
Adds a sharp, lemony acidity that brightens the soup.
Spinach
Softens into the soup, adding body, green colour and a mild, earthy flavour.
Leek
Cooked gently in butter, it adds a mild, sweet onion-like aroma.
Butter
Carries flavour and adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the soup.
Bread
Fried or browned pieces add a crisp, toasty contrast to the soft soup.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when gently heated but scramble if the soup is too hot or boiling. Remove the pan from direct heat or keep it barely warm before stirring the yolk mixture in slowly.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (spinach, butter, chervil, bread, sorrel, leek, lettuce):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against spinach, butter, chervil, bread, sorrel, leek, lettuce. 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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