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Spinach Soup

A vegetable soup made with spinach, parsley, carrots, onions, turnip, celery, butter, thyme, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Spinach Soup

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Spinach Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the spinach, parsley, carrots, onions, turnip, and celery.

Make the soup

  1. In a stew pan, melt the butter and add the chopped vegetables and herbs with a little salt.

  2. Pour in 1 pint of mushroom water and stew until the vegetables are soft.

  3. Rub the mixture through a coarse sieve.

  4. Add 1 quart of boiling water, season with salt and pepper, and boil for 15 minutes.

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.

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Spinach
Forms the bulk of the soup and gives it its green colour and fresh flavour.
Onions
Provide savoury sweetness and aroma as they soften in the butter.
Butter
Carries the heat and adds richness to the softened vegetables.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the soup.
Turnip
Adds earthy flavour and thickens the purée slightly.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture through a coarse sieve. Pressing the softened vegetables through the sieve breaks down their cell walls, creating a smooth, thick texture. Stewing until fully soft first makes this much easier and avoids fibrous lumps.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (spinach, parsley, carrot, turnip, celery, butter, thyme):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against spinach, parsley, carrot, turnip, celery, butter, thyme. 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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