Name: Spring Soups
Ingredients: any green vegetables (e.g., sea-kale, asparagus tops, green peas, spinach, lettuce, sorrel); mustard and cress; chives; young onions; gherkin (optional); cucumber (optional); green capsicum (optional); good broth

Why it works: Kale and sorrel share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Spring Soups

Ingredients

Directions

Combine all green vegetables, mustard, cress, chives, and young onions in a pot.
Add gherkins, cucumbers, and green capsicums if desired.
Stew in good broth until tender.
For a puree, blend the mixture until smooth.
For a chunky soup, chop the vegetables small and leave them in the soup, cooking slightly less.

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.

Kale + sorreltop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together317 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together204 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together64 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,356 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

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (kale, asparagus, spinach, lettuce, sorrel, mustard, chive):

Lentilsfits better
Cashew nutfits better
Beansfits better
Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against kale, asparagus, spinach, lettuce, sorrel, mustard, chive. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.