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Spanish Soup

A vegetable soup made with spinach, turnip, onions, celery, carrots, thyme, parsley, butter, broth, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Spanish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a stewpan, combine spinach, turnip, onions, celery, carrots, thyme, and parsley with butter and broth.

  2. Stew until the vegetables are tender.

  3. Pass the mixture through a sieve using a wooden spoon.

  4. Add fresh water to the vegetable pulp and liquor.

  5. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  3. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Spinach
Adds leafy green flavor and color to the soup base.
Onions
Build sweetness and savory depth as they soften during stewing.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor from the vegetables into the broth.
Carrots
Contribute natural sweetness and body once cooked and passed through a sieve.
Turnip
Adds earthy flavor and body to the pureed vegetable base.

The step that matters

Stew until the vegetables are tender. Vegetables that are not fully softened will not purée smoothly through a sieve, leaving a gritty, uneven texture in the soup.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (spinach, turnip, celery, carrot, thyme, parsley, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against spinach, turnip, celery, carrot, thyme, parsley, butter. 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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