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Spring Soup

A vegetable soup made with carrots, turnips, celery, onions, cauliflower, cabbage, greens, peas, and asparagus in fowl consommé.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and sorrel match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 317 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Spring Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Scrape and wash the carrots and turnips, then scoop them into small olive or pea shapes.

  2. Add the white part of the celery, small onions, and cauliflower florets.

  3. Blanch the vegetables in boiling water for 3 minutes, then strain them.

Simmer the soup

  1. Add the vegetables to 3 quarts of bright consommé of fowl and let it boil gently for 30 minutes.

  2. Add the white leaves of the cabbage lettuces, sorrel leaves, tarragon, chervil, and sugar, and continue to boil gently until done.

Finish and serve

  1. Before serving, add the green peas and asparagus tips to the tureen.

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. Lettuce + sorreltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together317 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + sorreltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together179 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Turnip + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together526 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together286 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

Carrots
Add sweetness and colour, and hold their shape through the simmer.
Turnips
Contribute body and a mild sweetness to the broth.
Cauliflower
Adds soft, mild texture and bulk to the soup.
Cabbage lettuces
Soften during simmering and add a delicate vegetable flavour and body.
Green peas
Add sweetness and bright colour when added just before serving.
Asparagus tips
Add tender texture and a fresh, grassy flavour when added just before serving.

The step that matters

Adding the green peas and asparagus tips before serving. These delicate vegetables turn dull and overcooked if boiled with the soup. Adding them to the hot tureen just before serving keeps their colour, texture and flavour fresh.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, celery, cauliflower, cabbage, lettuce, sorrel. 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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