Skip to main content
Main

Herb Soup

A hearty soup of cabbage, greens, carrots, cucumbers, bread, and cream, finished with egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Chervil and purslane share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 21 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Herb Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the herbs

  1. Combine the cabbage lettuces, chervil, purslane, parsley, green onions, and sorrel in a saucepan.

  2. If peas are in season, add them and omit half the sorrel.

  3. Add the butter, carrots, salt, and pepper.

  4. Stew covered for 30 minutes, shaking occasionally.

Add the cucumbers and bread

  1. Fry the cucumbers in butter until tender.

  2. Add the cucumbers, hot water, French roll, and toasted bread to the saucepan.

  3. Boil until reduced to 3 quarts.

  4. Strain through a sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Beat the egg yolks with the cream and stir gently into the soup just 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.

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 + purslanetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together21 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Purslane + sorreltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together21 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Cabbage lettuces
Form the bulk of the soup and give it a mild, vegetal body.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour from the herbs and vegetables.
Sorrel
Contributes a sharp, acidic note that brightens the soup.
Egg yolks
Thicken the soup and give it a smooth, creamy texture when stirred in gently.
Cream
Adds fat and softness, mellowing the soup and rounding its flavour.
French roll
Adds body and helps thicken the soup as it boils and reduces.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks and cream. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if they get too hot. Beating them with cream and stirring gently off the boil, just before serving, keeps the soup smooth and creamy.

Swap the peas

The recipe marks peas as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, lettuce, chervil, purslane, parsley, onion, sorrel):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Black-eyed peafits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, lettuce, chervil, purslane, parsley, onion, 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesGreen PeasGreen Peas229 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes