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Spring Soup

A broth of young peas, vegetables, and greens, clarified with egg, served with small crusts of French roll.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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

Make the broth

  1. Add young peas, sugar, and pepper to boiling broth.

  2. Mix flour with cold stock until smooth, then stir the mixture into the broth.

  3. Boil for 1.5 hours.

  4. Mix the white of an egg with cold beef stock, then add the egg mixture to the broth.

  5. After 20 minutes of boiling, strain through a napkin.

Add vegetables and herbs

  1. Add chopped carrot, turnip, celery, leeks, and onions to the boiling broth.

  2. Wash and add lettuce, sorrel, and chervil.

Serve

  1. Pour the soup into a tureen with small crusts of French roll.

  2. Top with green peas, asparagus tips, sugar, and small crusts of French roll.

  3. Serve in a 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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the broth, giving it a smoother, more body-filled texture.
Egg white
Clarifies the broth as it sets, helping remove cloudiness so the soup looks clear.
Young peas
Provide sweetness and fresh green flavour as the main vegetable in the soup.
Beef stock
Forms the savoury liquid base that all the other ingredients are cooked in.

The step that matters

Straining through a napkin after 20 minutes of boiling. Egg white must be given time to coagulate and trap cloudy particles before straining; straining too early leaves the broth murky, and the cloth must be fine enough to catch the set egg.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, pepper, flour, beef, carrot, turnip, celery):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, pepper, flour, beef, carrot, turnip, celery. 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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