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Soup Without Meat

A clear vegetable soup made with onions, celery, lettuce, spinach, and egg yolks, seasoned with salt, pepper, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and spinach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 427 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Soup Without Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the vegetables

  1. Heat the butter in a stewpan.

  2. Add the diced onions, celery, shredded lettuce, and spinach; cover and cook slowly for about 30 minutes.

  3. Add the boiling water, salt, and pepper; simmer gently until the vegetables are tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Beat the egg yolks slightly; gradually add a few tablespoons of the boiling soup to the yolks, mixing well.

  2. Stir the egg mixture into the soup and cook gently for a few minutes to cook the eggs.

  3. Adjust seasoning with salt, pepper, and vinegar to taste, then serve.

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. Lettuce + spinachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together427 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

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

  4. Celery + spinachtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together616 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  5. Spinach + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat and richness, and carries the flavor of the vegetables.
Onions
Build savory flavor as they soften slowly in the butter.
Lettuces
Soften into the soup, adding body and a mild, fresh flavor.
Egg yolks
Thicken the soup and add richness when gently cooked into it.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the soup.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks scramble if they meet hot liquid directly. Beating them and tempering with a few spoonfuls of hot soup first raises their temperature gently, so they blend smoothly. Then cook gently so the eggs set without curdling.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, celery, lettuce, spinach, vinegar, egg, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, celery, lettuce, spinach, vinegar, egg, 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.

More vegetable soup recipes

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