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Soup

Cabbage, Spinach, and Lettuce Soupes-maigres

A light soup made with cabbage, spinach, lettuce, onions, and seasonings, thickened with egg yolks and French roll pith.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Cabbage, Spinach, and Lettuce Soupes-maigres

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Melt the salted butter in a stewpan.

  2. Add the sliced onions and brown them.

  3. Stir in the finely cut vegetables, peppercorns, chervil, sorrel, cloves, and salt.

  4. Simmer until the vegetables are tender but not mushy.

Thicken and serve

  1. Beat the yolks of the eggs with the pith of the French rolls soaked in ginger-wine.

  2. Gradually mix the egg mixture into the soup to thicken it.

  3. Serve immediately, adding a squeeze of lemon if desired.

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. Spinach + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together427 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the soup and add richness when gently blended in.
Butter
Adds fat and rich flavour to the onions and vegetables at the start.
French roll pith
Soaked bread that helps bind and soften the egg mixture.
Onions
Browning them builds sweetness and deep savoury flavour.
Cabbage, spinach, and lettuce
Provide the main body and vegetal flavour of the soup.

The step that matters

Gradually mix the egg mixture into the soup. Adding the egg yolks too quickly or to a boiling soup can scramble them into lumps. Tempering with a little hot soup first and stirring gently keeps the mixture smooth and evenly thickened.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, cabbage, spinach, lettuce, chervil, sorrel):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, cabbage, spinach, lettuce, chervil, 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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