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Spring Soup

A light vegetable soup with stock, turnip, carrot, onion, celery, herbs, beef, egg white, and a pinch of castor sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Spring Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Clean and wash the vegetables, then peel them.

  2. Scoop out small rounds of carrot and turnip.

  3. Cut half the onion and one celery stalk into dice.

  4. Cook each of these separately in salted water.

  5. Cut the remaining vegetables into small pieces.

Make the soup

  1. Place them with the herbs in a stew-pan.

  2. Add the beaten egg white and the minced meat.

  3. Pour in the stock.

  4. Stir until it boils.

  5. Let it simmer gently for 10 minutes.

  6. Strain the soup carefully into a clean stew-pan.

  7. Add the previously cooked vegetables.

  8. Season with salt, pepper, and a pinch of castor sugar.

  9. Bring to a boil.

  10. Serve.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 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

Egg white
Clarifies the stock as it cooks, collecting fine particles so the soup strains clear.
Gravy beef
Gives the stock its meaty flavour as it simmers with the vegetables and herbs.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries the flavour of every other ingredient.
Turnip
Adds body and a mildly sweet, earthy flavour to the broth.
Carrot
Contributes sweetness and colour to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Stir until it boils, then simmer gently. Egg white clarifies the stock only if it is stirred while heating and then left undisturbed. Vigorous boiling breaks up the coagulated egg white and leaves the soup cloudy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, egg, carrot, celery, beef, pepper, sugar):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, egg, carrot, celery, beef, pepper, sugar. 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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