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Spring Soup

A vegetable soup made with carrots, turnips, onions, leeks, beans, cucumbers, asparagus tops, lettuces, sorrel, chervil, sugar, and green peas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop equal quantities of carrots, turnips, onions, and leeks.

  2. Stew the chopped vegetables in good stock.

Make the soup

  1. Add French beans, bean cucumbers, asparagus tops, lettuces, sorrel, and chervil.

  2. Stir in 1 teaspoon of white sugar and let the mixture reduce to nearly a glaze.

  3. Thicken some stock with green peas rubbed through a fine sieve.

  4. Combine the reduced vegetables with the thickened stock.

  5. For variation, thicken with asparagus rubbed through a fine sieve and strain off the vegetables, serving only asparagus tops in 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. Cucumber + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

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

  3. Turnip + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together526 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Leek + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together217 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 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

Green peas
Rubbed through a sieve, they thicken the stock and give the soup body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the vegetables brown and reduce to a glaze.
Asparagus tops
Add a fresh, grassy flavour and tender texture to the soup.
Sorrel
Adds a sharp, lemony acidity that brightens the soup.

The step that matters

Letting the mixture reduce to nearly a glaze. Reducing concentrates the flavour and sugars, and the sugar can scorch if the heat is too high or the pan is left unattended, turning the soup bitter.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, leek, beans, cucumber, asparagus, lettuce):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, leek, beans, cucumber, asparagus, lettuce. 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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