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Lettuce Soup

A soup made from chopped lettuce, butter, sugar, tarragon vinegar, flour, broth, cream, and egg, served with diced bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Lettuce Soup

Why it works: Lettuce and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 425 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lettuce Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Chop the lettuce and stew it with butter, sugar, and a few drops of Tarragon vinegar, stirring constantly to prevent burning.

  2. Add flour, salt, and pepper, then break an egg over the mixture.

  3. Pour in the weak broth.

  4. Serve with diced fresh bread in the tureen.

  5. Add cream 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.

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. Lettuce + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together425 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Tarragon + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lettuce + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Lettuce + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,236 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Lettuce
Forms the body and flavor of the soup as it stews down.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the stewed lettuce.
Flour
Thickens the soup slightly as it mixes with the butter and broth.
Egg
Enriches and thickens the soup as it sets into the hot mixture.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, mellow texture added just before serving.

The step that matters

Breaking the egg into the hot mixture. If the egg is added to a mixture that is too hot or boiling, it can curdle and turn grainy instead of thickening the soup smoothly. Stirring steadily helps it disperse evenly.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, tarragon, vinegar, flour, pepper, egg):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, tarragon, vinegar, flour, pepper, egg. 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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