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Thick Spring Soup

A hearty soup made with spring vegetables, butter, and broth, served thick and garnished with asparagus or croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Chervil and sorrel match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 247 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Thick Spring Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Combine the spring onions, carrots, lettuce, chervil, spinach, parsley, thyme, sorrel, mint, and asparagus with the butter in a stewpan.

  2. Cook on a brisk fire for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

  3. Add the soaked French rolls and mushroom trimmings.

  4. Pour in the broth and bring to a boil, then skim off any foam.

Strain and serve

  1. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve.

  2. Season with salt and sugar, and garnish with asparagus points or croutons.

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. Chervil + sorreltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together247 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lettuce + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together396 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Lettuce + sorreltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together317 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Spinach + sorreltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together204 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

French rolls
Soaked and squeezed rolls add body and thicken the soup as they break down.
Butter
Fat that softens the vegetables and carries flavour through the soup.
Broth
Liquid base that carries the vegetables and gives the soup its savoury depth.
Spinach
Leafy greens that add colour and soft, earthy body when cooked down.
Asparagus
Adds its distinctive spring flavour and fibre that contributes to the soup's texture.
Lettuce
Cooks down into a mild, soft base that adds bulk and body to the purée.

The step that matters

Cook on a brisk fire for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Stirring prevents the starchy bread and soft greens from sticking and scorching on the base of the pan, which would give a burnt taste to the whole soup.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, lettuce, chervil, spinach, parsley, thyme, sorrel):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, lettuce, chervil, spinach, parsley, thyme, sorrel. 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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