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Potage H l’Eau. — Water Soup.

A vegetable soup made with cabbage, carrots, parsnips, turnips, onion, celery, parsley, sorrel, chervil, peas, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and sorrel match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 179 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Potage H l’Eau. — Water Soup.

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a stewpot, combine the cabbage, carrots, parsnips, turnips, onion, celery, parsley, sorrel, chervil, and water.

  2. Add the peas tied in a cloth.

Simmer

  1. Boil for 3 hours over low heat, adding more water as needed.

Finish

  1. Season with salt to taste and strain the vegetables you wish to serve.

  2. Optionally, you can puree the peas before adding them to 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 + sorreltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together179 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Parsnip + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together590 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Cabbage
Adds body and a mild, savoury flavour as it softens into the broth.
Carrots
Contribute natural sweetness and body as they break down during long simmering.
Parsnips
Add sweetness and a thicker texture as their starches soften in the broth.
Onion
Provides savoury depth and aroma that forms the base of the soup.
Peas
Release starch and flavour into the broth, and can be pureed to thicken it.

The step that matters

Simmer gently over low heat for 3 hours. A gentle simmer lets the vegetables soften and release flavour slowly without breaking up or clouding the broth. Boiling hard would reduce the liquid quickly and can make the soup cloudy, so topping up with water keeps the level and balance steady.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, carrot, parsnip, turnip, celery, parsley, sorrel):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, carrot, parsnip, turnip, celery, parsley, 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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