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Herb Soup

A vegetable soup made with lettuces, spinach, purslane, beet leaves, onions, parsley, cucumbers, spinach juice, butter, and boiled asparagus tops.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Spinach 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 15 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Herb Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Combine the lettuces, spinach, purslane, beet leaves, young onions, and parsley in a stewpan.

  2. Remove seeds from the cucumbers and slice the cucumbers.

  3. Add the sliced cucumbers and spinach juice to the vegetables.

Cook the soup

  1. Melt the butter in the stewpan over a gentle fire.

  2. Cover and cook for 2 hours.

  3. Pour in boiling water until the soup reaches the desired thickness.

  4. Season with pepper and salt.

  5. Let the soup simmer for 1 hour.

  6. Add boiled asparagus tops cut into bits.

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. Spinach + purslanetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together15 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Purslane + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together22 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Purslane + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together32 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Spinach + cucumbertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together355 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Lettuces
Provide the bulk of the soup and soften into a tender, mild base.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the soup.
Cucumbers
Contribute a light, fresh flavour and watery body as they cook down.
Spinach
Adds green colour and a earthy, vegetal flavour.

The step that matters

Cover and cook for 2 hours over a gentle fire. Long, low cooking softens the fibrous leaves and blends their flavours. Too much heat can scorch the butter and vegetables on the base of the pan, giving a bitter, burnt taste.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, spinach, purslane, parsley, cucumber, butter, pepper):

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, spinach, purslane, parsley, cucumber, butter, pepper. 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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