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Spring Soup

A vegetable soup made with carrots, turnips, onions, asparagus, peas, parsley, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Spring Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Combine carrots, turnips, and onions in a pot with 1 pint of cold water and 2 tablespoons of sugar.

  2. Let sit for 1 hour.

Make the stock

  1. Add vegetable trimmings to 5 pints of stock and boil for 1 hour.

  2. Strain the mixture.

Cook and serve

  1. Add the carrots, turnips, and onions to the strained stock and boil for 15 minutes.

  2. Add peas and asparagus heads, then boil uncovered for 20 minutes.

  3. Stir in 1 teaspoon of salt and parsley.

  4. Boil for 2 more minutes.

  5. Serve.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + asparagustop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together328 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Asparagus + peastop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together808 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

Carrots
Hold their shape and add sweetness and body to the broth.
Turnips
Add a firm texture and mild, slightly peppery flavour to the soup.
Asparagus
Adds fresh green flavour and a tender bite when cooked briefly.
Green peas
Add sweetness and a soft, tender texture to the soup.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the vegetables brown lightly and taste rounder.

The step that matters

Boil the peas and asparagus for the stated time. Young, tender vegetables overcook quickly. Boiling them too long turns them dull and mushy, so they should be checked closely during the final 20 minutes.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, asparagus, peas, parsley, sugar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, asparagus, peas, parsley, sugar. 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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