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Green Rye Soup

A hearty vegetable soup with rye, leeks, celery, and flour thickener, sweetened to taste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Leek and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,093 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Green Rye Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare 2 quarts of rich vegetable soup.

  2. Add 1 lb of well-washed rye to the soup.

  3. Include 6 leeks and 1 head of celery tied in a bunch.

  4. Boil slowly for about 4 hours.

Finish the soup

  1. Remove the vegetable bunch and chop the vegetables into small pieces.

  2. Return the chopped vegetables to the soup.

  3. Thicken the soup with 2 tablespoons of flour mixed in cold stock.

  4. Stir until smooth and add moist sugar to taste.

  5. Boil slowly for about 1 hour, skimming thoroughly.

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. Leek + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Rye + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,320 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Leek + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together328 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Rye + leektop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Rye + celerytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Rye
Adds body and a hearty texture as it cooks down into the soup.
Leeks
Contribute savory, mild onion flavor and sweetness to the broth.
Celery
Adds aromatic, savory flavor to the broth during long simmering.
Flour
Thickens the soup as its starch swells when heated in liquid.

The step that matters

Thickening with flour mixed in cold stock. Flour added directly to hot liquid forms lumps, because its starch clumps before it can disperse. Mixing it into cold stock first lets the starch spread evenly, so it thickens smoothly when the soup is heated.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rye, leek, flour, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rye, leek, flour, sugar. 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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