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Spring Soup Without Meat

A hearty vegetable soup made with lettuce, cabbage, carrot, turnip, onion, leeks, celery, cauliflower, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Spring Soup Without Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the cauliflower into small pieces and set aside the florets.

  2. Chop the tender part of the cauliflower stalk into small pieces.

  3. Prepare the rest of the vegetables and shred them finely.

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a large pot over medium heat.

  2. Add the shredded vegetables and cauliflower stalk, cooking for 20 minutes without browning.

  3. Pour in the water, add salt and pepper, and simmer gently until tender, about 1 hour.

  4. Twenty minutes before serving, add the cauliflower florets.

Serve

  1. Cut 2 or 3 slices of well-browned toast into small dice and place them in a serving bowl.

  2. Adjust seasoning as needed and serve the soup.

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. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Lettuce + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together526 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Lettuce + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together217 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together286 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Fat that softens the vegetables gently and adds richness to the soup.
Cabbage
Adds body and a mild, sweet vegetable flavour as it becomes tender.
Leeks
Add a mild onion-like sweetness that builds the base flavour of the soup.
Cauliflower
Provides tender pieces and mild flavour; florets are added late so they keep their texture.

The step that matters

Cooking the shredded vegetables in butter without browning. Gentle cooking softens the vegetables and draws out their sweetness. Browning would add bitter, roasted notes that change the clean flavour of the soup.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, cabbage, carrot, turnip, leek, celery, cauliflower):

  1. Beetrootfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Endivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, cabbage, carrot, turnip, leek, celery, cauliflower. 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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