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Spring Soup

A light vegetable soup made with stock, peas, beans, asparagus, lettuce, carrot, onion, herbs, beef gravy, and egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and asparagus match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 292 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Spring Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the vegetables and cut the carrot into small pea-shaped pieces.

  2. Cook all the vegetables separately in salted water.

Make the soup

  1. In a pan, combine the stock, onion, herbs, beef gravy, and egg white.

  2. Whisk until it boils, then simmer for 10 minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture and reheat.

Serve

  1. Add the prepared vegetables and 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. Beans + asparagustop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together292 recipes

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

  2. Beans + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together500 recipes

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

  3. Asparagus + lettucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together313 recipes

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

  4. Peas + asparagustop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together808 recipes

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

  5. Beans + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,443 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Unclarified stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the whole soup.
Egg white
Coagulates as it heats, collecting fine particles so the stock can be clarified.
Beef gravy
Adds savoury depth and body to the stock.
Green peas
Contribute sweetness and fresh vegetable flavour and texture.
Asparagus tops
Add a delicate, slightly grassy flavour and tender texture.

The step that matters

Whisk until it boils, then simmer. Whisking while the egg white heats lets it coagulate and trap cloudy particles. Boiling too hard or stirring afterwards breaks up the raft, leaving the soup murky.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, beans, asparagus, lettuce, carrot, beef, egg):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, beans, asparagus, lettuce, carrot, beef, 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.

More spring soup recipes

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