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Spring Soup

A hearty soup made with veal, ham or bacon, split peas, and assorted vegetables, finished with fresh herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Spring Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a large pot, combine water, veal, ham or bacon, green split peas, onions, turnips, parsley, thyme, celery, and leek.

  2. Stew the mixture until the peas are very soft.

  3. Remove the meat and press the remaining mixture through a fine sieve.

  4. Season the soup with pepper and coarse sea salt.

Add vegetables and colour

  1. Chop the asparagus tops, cabbage hearts, and mint, then stew them until tender, keeping them bright green.

  2. Add the vegetables to the soup 15 minutes before serving.

  3. If the soup isn't green enough, pound some spinach, squeeze the juice through a cloth, and add ¼ pint to the tureen before pouring 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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Thyme + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,193 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Green split peas
Break down when stewed to thicken the soup and give it body.
Veal knuckle
Releases gelatin and flavour into the broth, giving it richness and body.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they stew, adding savoury depth to the base.
Asparagus tops
Add tender texture and fresh green flavour when stewed briefly.
Cabbage hearts
Add soft texture and mild sweetness as they stew until tender.
Spinach juice
Adds green colour to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Keeping the vegetables bright green. Green vegetables turn olive-brown when overcooked because acids released during cooking break down chlorophyll. Stewing them only until tender and adding them late helps preserve their colour.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, ham, onion, turnip, parsley, thyme, celery):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, onion, turnip, parsley, thyme, celery. 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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