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Soup

A Vegetable Soup with Meat

A hearty vegetable soup made with cabbage, beet leaves, celery, leeks, sorrel, carrot, cucumber, peas, asparagus, chervil, gravy, butter, and beef or veal broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and sorrel match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 317 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

A Vegetable Soup with Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop a good handful each of cabbage lettuces, white beet leaves, celery, leeks, sorrel, and scraped carrot.

  2. Add sliced cucumbers, young peas, asparagus, and a little chervil.

Make the soup

  1. Stew the mixture gently in gravy and a few ounces of butter until tender.

  2. Add the required quantity of gravy or good broth made from shank of beef or veal and mutton.

  3. Bring to a boil and 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. Lettuce + sorreltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together317 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Leek + sorreltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together112 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Sorrel + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together119 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Lettuce + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

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

  5. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel as it cooks with the vegetables.
Young peas
Add sweetness and a fresh, tender texture to the soup.
Leeks
Contribute a mild onion-like aroma and sweetness when stewed slowly.
Cucumbers
Add a light, cool, watery texture that softens during gentle stewing.

The step that matters

Stew gently until tender. Stewing slowly over low heat softens fibrous vegetables without boiling them to mush or losing their colour and flavour. Rushing this step leaves the vegetables tough or overcooked.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, lettuce, celery, leek, sorrel, carrot, cucumber):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, lettuce, celery, leek, sorrel, carrot, cucumber. 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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