Name: Vegetable Soup
Ingredients: yellow peas; haricots; lentils; carrots; turnips; spinach; water; coarse sea salt

Why it works: Lentils and spinach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 132 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pulse base

Boil a quantity of yellow peas, haricots, or lentils in water until tender.
Press the mixture through a sieve with the cooking water using a wooden spoon.

Prepare the vegetables

Cut carrots, turnips, and spinach into fine strips.
Blanch the sliced vegetables in boiling water for a few minutes. Remove the blanched vegetables with a strainer.

Combine and simmer

Mix the vegetables with the pea mixture. Boil the entire mixture gradually for at least two hours, stirring frequently.
Add a little coarse sea salt before serving.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Lentils + spinachtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together132 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Lentils + turniptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together109 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Turnip + spinachtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together320 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Lentils + carrottop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together505 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Yellow peas: Break down into a thick purée that gives the soup its body.
Haricots: Break down into a thick purée that gives the soup its body.
Lentils: Break down into a thick purée that gives the soup its body.
Carrots: Add sweetness, colour and some body as fine strips in the soup.
Turnips: Add mild sweetness and texture as fine strips in the soup.
Spinach: Adds colour, flavour and soft texture to the soup.

The step that matters

Boil the entire mixture gradually for at least two hours, stirring frequently. A long, gentle simmer lets the pulses and vegetables soften fully and blend into the broth. Frequent stirring prevents the thick purée from scorching on the bottom of the pot.