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Dock, to Dress

A nettle soup made with boiled nettles, onion, parsley, butter, oatmeal, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Dock, to Dress

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil the nettles with the carbonate of soda.

  2. Strain the mixture into a pint basin.

  3. Add the fried onion, parsley, butter, pepper, and salt.

  4. Place in a stewpan over heat and stir.

  5. Gradually add the oatmeal and cook until sufficiently boiled.

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Nettles
Provide the main green flavour and body of the soup.
Oatmeal
Thickens the soup as it cooks, giving it a fuller texture.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the soup.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma once fried.

The step that matters

Gradually add the oatmeal and cook until sufficiently boiled. Adding oatmeal all at once can form lumps that stay dry inside. Adding it gradually while stirring lets the starch hydrate evenly and thicken the soup smoothly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, butter, pepper):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, butter, pepper. 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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