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Spring Soup

A light soup made with stock, carrots, onions, turnip, celery, beef, egg white, herbs, salt, pepper, and a pinch of sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Spring Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Clean and wash the vegetables.

  2. Peel them and scoop out small rounds of carrot and turnip.

  3. Dice half the onion and one celery stalk, then cook each separately in salted water.

  4. Chop the remaining vegetables and place them in a stewpan with the herbs.

Make the soup

  1. Add the beaten egg white and minced meat, then pour in the stock.

  2. Stir until it boils, then reduce heat and let simmer gently for 10 minutes.

  3. Strain the soup carefully into a clean stewpan.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the cooked vegetables, season with salt, pepper, and a pinch of sugar.

  2. Bring to a boil and serve.

  3. Optionally, add finely cut tarragon and chervil leaves.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 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

Gravy beef
Provides savory meat flavor to the broth as it simmers.
Egg white
Clarifies the stock as it coagulates, trapping particles so the soup runs clear.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavor of the whole soup.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg white and meat into the cold stock before it boils. Egg white proteins set around the meat and debris as the liquid heats, forming a raft that clarifies the broth. Stirring only until it boils, then simmering gently, keeps the raft intact; vigorous boiling would break it up and cloud the soup.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, celery, beef, egg, pepper, sugar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, celery, beef, egg, pepper, sugar. 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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