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Herb Soup

A vegetable soup made with butter, leeks, sorrel, chervil, lettuce, mixed herbs, salt, pepper, water, egg yolks, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Herb Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add leeks, sorrel, chervil, lettuce leaves, mixed herbs, salt, and pepper.

  3. Cook until softened.

  4. Add water and bring to a boil.

  5. Thicken the soup with egg yolks and cream.

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. Chervil + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together396 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Sorrel + lettucetop 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. Leek + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together148 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

Leeks
Soften during cooking to give the soup its body and a mild, sweet onion-like flavour.
Egg yolks
Thicken the soup as they gently set with heat, giving it a smooth, rich texture.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, softening the flavour and giving a silkier mouthfeel.
Butter
Fat for cooking the vegetables and herbs, carrying flavour and preventing sticking.

The step that matters

Thickening with egg yolks and cream. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat; if the soup boils after adding them, the proteins scramble and the texture turns grainy. Add them off the heat or over very low heat, stirring constantly.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, leek, sorrel, chervil, pepper, egg, cream):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Lettucethe original
  4. Spinachfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, leek, sorrel, chervil, pepper, egg, cream. 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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