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Spring Soup Without Meat

A hearty vegetable soup made with lettuce, cabbage, carrot, turnip, onion, leeks, celery, cauliflower, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Spring Soup Without Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the cauliflower florets into small pieces and set aside.

  2. Cut the tender part of the stalk into small pieces.

  3. Prepare the rest of the vegetables and shred them finely.

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a large stewpan.

  2. Add the shredded vegetables and cauliflower stalk.

  3. Cook without browning for 20 minutes.

  4. Add the water, salt, and pepper.

  5. Cook gently until tender, about 1 hour.

  6. 20 minutes before serving, add the cauliflower sprouts.

Serve

  1. Cut 2 or 3 slices of well-browned toast into small dice.

  2. Place them in the tureen.

  3. Add any necessary seasoning to the soup.

  4. 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. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Lettuce + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together526 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Lettuce + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together217 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together286 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Melts to coat the vegetables and softens them gently without browning, carrying flavor into the soup.
Cauliflower
Its florets and stalk add body and a mild sweetness as they soften in the broth.
Leeks
Soften during gentle cooking to add a mild onion-like sweetness and aroma.
Lettuce
Wilts into the broth, adding soft texture and a delicate vegetal flavor.

The step that matters

Cook without browning for 20 minutes. Browning the shredded vegetables in butter creates bitter, harsh flavors and a darker color. Keeping heat low lets them soften and release sweetness, so the soup stays mild and pale.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, cabbage, carrot, turnip, leek, celery, cauliflower. 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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