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Soup

Spanish Soup

A savory soup of carrot, onion, tomato, herbs, and spices simmered in stock with sherry, thickened with cornflour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Spanish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Fry the carrot, onion, bay leaf, thyme, marjoram, clove, allspice, peppercorns, and tomato until slightly brown.

  3. Add the stock, Bovril, and sherry; stir until boiling.

  4. Cover and simmer for 35 minutes or longer.

Thicken and serve

  1. Mix the cornflour with a little water to form a smooth paste, then stir it into the soup.

  2. Continue stirring and boil for 8 minutes.

  3. Season with salt 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. Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,077 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Allspice + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together342 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Carrot + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Cornflour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth, body-rich soup when cooked with the stock.
Butter
Carries the aromatics and adds richness to the soup base.
Tomato
Adds acidity and savoury flavour to the soup.
Onion
Builds savoury sweetness and depth when fried until slightly brown.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the stock.

The step that matters

Stirring in the cornflour paste. Cornflour clumps if added dry or unevenly; mixing it smooth with cold water first and stirring while the soup boils lets the starch swell evenly and thicken without lumps.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, clove, allspice, thyme, marjoram, tomato, sherry):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, clove, allspice, thyme, marjoram, tomato, sherry. 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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