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Soup Without Meat

A hearty vegetable soup made with butter, onions, celery, lettuce, spinach, parsley, vinegar, egg yolks, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and spinach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 427 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Soup Without Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soup

  1. Heat the butter in a stewpan.

  2. Add the prepared vegetables, cover, and cook slowly for about 1 hour.

  3. Add the boiling water and season with salt and pepper, then simmer gently until the vegetables are tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Beat the egg yolks slightly, then gradually add a few tablespoons of the boiling soup to them.

  2. Blend well, then add the mixture to the saucepan.

  3. Stir and cook gently for a few minutes to cook the eggs.

  4. Add salt, pepper, and vinegar to taste, then 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. Lettuce + spinachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together427 recipes

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

  2. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Lettuce + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

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

  5. Spinach + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,025 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

Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor as the vegetables soften in the pan.
Onions
Build the flavor base and add sweetness as they soften slowly.
Celery
Adds aromatic flavor and body as it cooks down into the soup.
Lettuces
Soften into the broth, adding body and a mild, fresh vegetable flavor.
Egg yolks
Thicken and enrich the soup when gently heated, giving it a smoother, creamier texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the finished soup.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if added to hot liquid directly. Beating them and gradually adding some hot soup first tempers them, then gentle heating thickens the soup without cooking the eggs into lumps.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, celery, lettuce, spinach, parsley, vinegar, egg):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, celery, lettuce, spinach, parsley, vinegar, egg. 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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