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Spring Vegetable Soup

A light soup made with peas, lettuce, onion, parsley, butter, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Spring Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the vegetable base

  1. Combine lettuces, onion, parsley, butter, and water in a stewpan.

  2. Simmer until tender.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

  4. Strain off the vegetables.

Finish the soup

  1. Mix two-thirds of the liquid with the soup stock.

  2. Beat the egg yolks with the remaining third of the liquid.

  3. Heat the mixture over the fire.

  4. Add the heated mixture along with the vegetables to the strained soup just 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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Lettuce + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

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

  3. Peas + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,293 recipes

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

  4. Lettuce + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lettuces
Break down into the soup, adding body, flavour and a soft green character.
Butter
Carries flavour and adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the soup.
Egg yolks
Thicken the liquid gently when heated and add richness and body.
Green peas
Provide the main body and sweet, vegetal flavour of the soup.
Soup stock
Forms the savoury liquid base that carries the other flavours.

The step that matters

Heating the egg yolk mixture. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat, but if they get too hot they scramble into grainy curds. Heat slowly and keep the mixture moving, and add it just before serving so the soup stays smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, lettuce, parsley, butter, egg, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, lettuce, parsley, butter, egg, pepper. 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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