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Potage Printanier —

A vegetable soup made with carrot, turnip, celery, leeks, onions, lettuce, sorrel, chervil, peas, asparagus, and consommé.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Sorrel and chervil 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 ↓

Potage Printanier —

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Cut the red part of the carrot into small columns, half an inch long and a quarter of an inch wide.

  2. Cut the turnip, celery, and leeks in the same manner.

Cook and serve

  1. Wash the vegetables and add them to the boiling consommé.

  2. Add blanched lettuce, sorrel, and chervil.

  3. Serve in a tureen with green peas and asparagus points.

  4. Add a little sugar and small 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. Sorrel + cherviltop 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. Leek + sorreltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together112 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Carrot
Provides structure and a little sweetness as the cut pieces soften in the broth.
Lettuce
Adds tender body and soft texture to the broth when blanched.
Leeks
Contribute a mild onion aroma and soft texture to the consommé.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Endivefits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, celery, leek, lettuce, sorrel, 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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