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Spring Soup

A hearty vegetable soup made with peas, cauliflower, turnip, carrot, celery, string beans, tomato, asparagus, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Spring Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Cook the cauliflower, turnip, carrot, celery, and string beans in water to cover for 1 hour.

Make the soup

  1. In a separate pan, melt the butter and stir in the flour until smooth but not browned.

  2. Stir the butter‑flour mixture into the heated soup stock until boiling.

  3. Add the chopped tomato and simmer gently for 15 minutes.

  4. Strain the soup, then add the peas and cooked vegetables back in.

  5. Simmer again for 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve with small slices of toasted bread on the side.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Cauliflower + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together286 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Cauliflower + asparagustop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together163 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Beans + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 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
Melted with flour to form a roux that thickens the soup.
Flour
Combined with melted butter to form a roux that thickens the stock.
Soup stock
Forms the liquid base of the soup, carrying the flavour of the vegetables.
Cauliflower
Softens during long cooking, adding body and mild flavour to the soup.
String beans
Soften during long cooking, adding texture and body to the soup.
Tomato
Adds acidity and savoury flavour as it simmers into the soup.

The step that matters

Stirring the butter‑flour mixture into the hot stock. Flour must be cooked in the butter until smooth, then whisked into hot liquid so it disperses evenly; adding it lumpy or to cold stock causes clumps and an uneven thickened texture.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cauliflower, turnip, carrot, celery, beans, tomato, asparagus):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Chickpeafits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cauliflower, turnip, carrot, celery, beans, tomato, asparagus. 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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