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Soup

Herb Soup

A vegetable soup made with cabbage, carrots, parsley roots, leeks, potatoes, margarine, salt, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Herb Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the margarine in a large pot.

  2. Add the cabbage, carrots, parsley roots, leeks, and potatoes to the pot and sauté for 5 minutes without browning.

  3. Pour in boiling water and bring to a boil.

  4. Reduce heat and simmer for 45 minutes to 1 hour.

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

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

  2. Carrot + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Cabbage + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together214 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Parsley + leektop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together759 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Break down during simmering to thicken the soup and add body.
Leeks
Soften during sautéing and add a mild onion-like aroma to the broth.
Margarine
Provides fat for sautéing the vegetables and carries flavor.

The step that matters

Sautéing without browning. Browning changes the flavor and color of the broth, giving a deeper, toasted taste rather than the clean, light flavor this soup is meant to have. Keep the heat moderate and stir so the vegetables soften gently in the fat.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, parsley, leek, potato):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, parsley, leek, potato. 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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