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Soup

Spanish Soup

A savory vegetable soup with carrot, onion, tomato, herbs, and sherry, thickened with cornflour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Spanish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Fry the carrot, onion, bay leaf, thyme, marjoram, clove, allspice, and peppercorns until slightly brown.

  3. Add the tomato, stock, Bovril, and sherry. Stir until boiling.

  4. Cover and simmer for 35 minutes or longer.

Thicken and serve

  1. Mix the cornflour with a little water to form a smooth paste, then stir it into the soup.

  2. Continue stirring and boil for 8 minutes.

  3. Season with salt and serve hot.

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. Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,077 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Allspice + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together342 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Carrot + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 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

Butter
Fat that carries the aromatics and adds richness to the soup.
Cornflour
Starch that thickens the soup as it boils, giving it body.
Onion
Browns during frying to build a deeper, savoury flavour base.
Tomato
Adds acidity and a fresh, sharp note that balances the soup.
Sherry
Adds a fortified wine aroma and sweetness that rounds out the broth.

The step that matters

Stirring in the cornflour paste. Cornflour must be mixed smooth in cold water first, then stirred in and kept moving while boiling. Added dry or left still, it clumps and thickens unevenly, and it needs to boil to lose its raw starch taste and reach full thickness.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, clove, allspice, thyme, marjoram, tomato, sherry):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, clove, allspice, thyme, marjoram, tomato, sherry. 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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