Skip to main content
Main

Soup a LA Flamond

A vegetable soup with turnips, carrots, onions, lettuce, asparagus peas, butter, stock, flour, egg yolks, cream, and béchamel sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Asparagus and peas match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 807 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Combine turnips, carrots, green onions, Spanish onion, lettuce, and asparagus peas in a small soup pot.

  2. Add butter and a little stock.

  3. Sweat the vegetables on low heat for 1 hour.

  4. Stir in enough flour to absorb the butter.

  5. Add the remaining stock.

  6. Bring to a boil on low heat for 30 minutes.

Make the custard and finish

  1. Beat the egg yolks in a bowl.

  2. Mix in the cooled cream and strain through a sieve.

  3. Add the béchamel sauce to the egg mixture.

  4. Remove the soup from heat and stir in the egg mixture gradually.

  5. Return the soup to the heat, stirring constantly until it reaches a boil.

  6. Remove from heat.

  7. Keep the soup warm by placing the pot in a pan of hot water.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Asparagus + peastop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together807 recipes

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

  2. Turnip + carrottop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together8,001 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + lettucetop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together526 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Lettuce + peastop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,293 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Lettuce + asparagustop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together313 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

Butter
Enriches the soup and coats the vegetables, adding richness and mouthfeel.
Flour
Absorbs the butter and thickens the soup as it cooks.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the soup when gently heated, adding body and smoothness.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the finished soup.
Turnips
Provide the bulk and mild, slightly sweet body of the vegetable base.

The step that matters

Adding the egg mixture to the hot soup. Egg yolks can scramble if they meet high heat directly. Removing the soup from heat and stirring the egg mixture in gradually tempers it, so the soup thickens smoothly instead of curdling.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, carrot, lettuce, asparagus, peas, butter, flour):

  1. Leekbetter flavor fit
  2. Beetrootbetter flavor fit
  3. Cauliflowerbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, carrot, lettuce, asparagus, peas, butter, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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.

You might also like

Illustration of Green PeasIllustrationGreen Peas229 recipesIllustration of Asparagus SoupIllustrationAsparagus Soup179 recipesIllustration of Carrot SoupIllustrationCarrot Soup134 recipesIllustration of Asparagus SaladIllustrationAsparagus Salad77 recipes