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Spanish Soup

A vegetable soup made with onions, celery, lettuce, endive, spinach, herbs, butter, water, and bread raspings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and endive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 284 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Spanish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare bread raspings by baking odd crusts of bread until crisp and brown, then reduce to powder and store in a dry place.

Make the soup

  1. In a three-quart saucepan, thicken 2 quarts of water with the bread raspings.

  2. Cut the onions into six pieces each and add to the saucepan with a little pepper and salt.

  3. Cover the saucepan and boil for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

  4. Strain the contents into a basin or back into the saucepan.

Add the vegetables and serve

  1. In a separate saucepan, melt 1½ ounces of butter and stir in some flour until browned.

  2. Add the shredded vegetables to the butter and cook for 5 minutes.

  3. Add the strained soup to the vegetables and boil until tender.

  4. Skim the soup and pour it into a soup tureen over fried bread.

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. Lettuce + endivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together284 recipes

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

  2. Endive + spinachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together60 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Lettuce + spinachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together427 recipes

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

  4. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Softens as it cooks, releasing sweetness and building the body of the broth.
Bread raspings
Thickens the water by absorbing liquid and giving the soup body.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour, and browns to add a nutty note.
Celery
Adds savoury, aromatic flavour and a little texture as it softens.
Lettuce
Softens into the broth, adding mild sweetness and body.
Endive
Adds a slightly bitter note that balances the sweetness of the onions.

The step that matters

Browning the butter and flour. Cooking the flour in butter until browned builds a nutty, savoury flavour and helps thicken the soup. Too much heat burns the flour, leaving a bitter taste that spoils the whole pot.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, lettuce, endive, spinach, butter, bread, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, lettuce, endive, spinach, butter, bread, 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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