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Spring Soup

A light chicken consommé soup with blanched spring vegetables, herbs, and croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Spring Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Scoop carrots and turnips into small olive or pea shapes using a vegetable scoop.

  2. Blanch the carrots, turnips, celery, onions, and cauliflower in boiling water for 3 minutes, then strain.

Make the soup

  1. Add the blanched vegetables to 3 quarts of chicken consomme and let it boil gently for 30 minutes.

  2. Add the stamped cabbage lettuce leaves, sorrel, tarragon, chervil, and sugar, and continue to boil gently until done.

Serve

  1. Before serving, add the green peas, asparagus heads, and croutons to the tureen.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Turnip + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together526 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Cauliflower + cabbagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together305 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken consomme
Provides the clear, savoury liquid base that carries the whole soup.
Carrots
Add sweetness and colour, and hold their shape through the simmer.
Turnips
Add a mild, slightly sweet body and firm texture to the soup.
Cauliflower
Adds bulk and a tender-firm texture to the soup.
Cabbage lettuces
Add leafy tenderness and fresh, green flavour once simmered.
Young green peas
Add sweet flavour and bright colour, kept fresh by adding them last.

The step that matters

Adding the green peas, asparagus and croutons at the end. These delicate ingredients turn soft and dull in boiling liquid, and croutons go soggy quickly. Adding them just before serving keeps their colour, texture and crispness.

Swap the onion

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

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

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