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Soup

Solferino Soup

A bean and vegetable soup with tomato purée, herbs, and stock, served over toasted bread crusts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Solferino Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Combine equal quantities of haricot beans, French beans, young potatoes, young carrots, and green peas.

  2. Add 3-4 tablespoons of purée of tomato, chopped parsley, chives, and celery.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the mixture in stock.

  2. Pour the soup over toasted bread crusts.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Beans + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Potato + chivetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together611 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Haricot beans
Provide body and substance, thickening the soup as they cook.
Young potatoes
Add starch that softens into the broth and gives the soup body.
Purée of tomato
Adds acidity, colour and a deeper savoury flavour to the stock.
Green peas
Contribute sweetness and a fresh, green vegetable flavour.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, potato, carrot, tomato, parsley, chive, celery):

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Black-eyed peafits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, potato, carrot, tomato, parsley, chive, 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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