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Soup

Thick Spring Soup

A thick soup made with spring vegetables, greens, French rolls, and broth, garnished with asparagus points 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

Cook the vegetables

  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 1 hour, stirring occasionally.

Thicken and strain

  1. Add the soaked French rolls to thicken the soup and a few mushroom trimmings.

  2. Pour in the broth and bring to a near boil, then skim the surface.

  3. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve.

Season and serve

  1. 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, they thicken the soup into a body-rich texture.
Spinach
Adds leafy body and a deep green colour to the soup.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the vegetables soften and carry flavour.
Broth
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the soup.
Asparagus
Contributes its fresh, grassy flavour to the soup and to the garnish.
Mushroom trimmings
Add savoury, earthy depth to the broth.

The step that matters

Passing the mixture through a fine sieve. Pushing the cooked vegetables and bread through a fine sieve removes fibres and lumps, giving the soup a smooth, even texture. Skimming before this keeps surface scum out of the finished 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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