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Thick Spring Soup

A thick soup made with spring onions, carrots, lettuce, chervil, spinach, parsley, thyme, sorrel, mint, asparagus, and French rolls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Chervil and sorrel match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 247 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Thick Spring Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the spring onions, carrots, lettuce, chervil, spinach, parsley, thyme, sorrel, mint, and asparagus.

  3. Cook for 1 hour, stirring occasionally.

Thicken and finish

  1. Add the soaked French rolls to thicken the soup and a few mushroom trimmings.

  2. Pour in the broth and bring to a near boil.

  3. Skim the surface.

  4. Strain the soup through a fine sieve.

  5. Season with salt and sugar to taste.

  6. Garnish with asparagus points or croutons before serving.

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. Chervil + sorreltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together247 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lettuce + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together396 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Lettuce + sorreltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together317 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Spinach + sorreltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together204 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

French rolls
Soaked and squeezed, they dissolve into the soup and thicken it.
Butter
Melts to gently cook the vegetables in fat, building a mellow flavour.
Spring onions
Provide a mild, sweet onion aroma that forms the base of the soup.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body as they soften during the long cooking.
Broth
Serves as the liquid that carries the flavour and fills out the soup.
Spinach
Breaks down into the soup, adding body and a green, earthy flavour.

The step that matters

Bring to a near boil, then skim. Letting the broth boil hard can cloud the soup and push fine solids through the sieve; a gentle simmer and skimming keep it clear and smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, lettuce, chervil, spinach, parsley, thyme, sorrel):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, lettuce, chervil, spinach, parsley, thyme, sorrel. 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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