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Sante, or Spring Soup

A vegetable soup made with turnips, carrots, celery, leeks, cabbage, cos lettuce, endive, chervil, and optional spring vegetables, simmered in brown stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Endive and chervil share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 75 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Sante, or Spring Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Peel and cut turnips and carrots into shapes.

  2. Wash and steam the turnips, carrots, and celery separately with a little water until three-quarters done.

  3. Cut the white parts of the celery into small pieces.

  4. Blanch and drain leeks, cabbage, cos lettuce, endive, and chervil.

Make the soup

  1. Combine all the vegetables in a pot.

  2. Add 3 quarts of cleared brown stock and boil gently until tender.

  3. In spring, add young green peas, tops of asparagus, and button onions, steamed as above.

  4. If using, stew a small piece of bouillie beef until tender, then add it to the soup ten minutes 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. Endive + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together75 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 + endivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together284 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Leek + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together148 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

Turnips
Hold their shape and add a mild, slightly sweet flavour as they cook.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and colour, and keep their shape through gentle simmering.
Leeks
Contribute a delicate onion-like aroma that flavours the stock.
Cabbage
Adds body and a savoury, slightly sweet vegetable flavour to the broth.
Cleared brown stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the whole soup.

The step that matters

Boil gently until tender. A rolling boil can break up the delicate vegetables and turn the broth cloudy, so a gentle simmer keeps the soup clear and the vegetables intact.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Beetrootfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, carrot, celery, leek, lettuce, endive, chervil. 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 vegetable soup recipes

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