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Soup

Thick Spring Soup

A thick soup made with spring onions, carrots, lettuce, chervil, spinach, parsley, thyme, sorrel, mint, asparagus, and French rolls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Chervil and sorrel 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 ↓

Thick Spring Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soup

  1. In a stewpan, combine spring onions, carrots, lettuce, chervil, spinach, parsley, thyme, sorrel, mint, and asparagus with butter.

  2. Sweat the mixture over medium heat for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

  3. Add the soaked French rolls and mushroom trimmings to the pan.

  4. Pour in the broth and bring to a boil, then skim off any foam.

Strain and serve

  1. Pass the soup through a fine sieve or tammy.

  2. Season with salt and sugar, and garnish with asparagus points or 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. Chervil + sorreltop 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. Spinach + sorreltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together204 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Spring onions
Add mild onion flavor and aroma as the base of the soup.
French rolls
Soaked and squeezed, they thicken the soup and give it body.
Spinach
Contributes green color and a soft, vegetal body when sweated down.
Broth
Supplies the liquid and savory meaty flavor that the vegetables simmer in.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor as the vegetables sweat.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the soup's flavor base.

The step that matters

Skimming the foam after the boil. Foam carries impurities and dulls flavor and clarity; removing it as the broth comes to a boil keeps the soup clean-tasting and clear.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, lettuce, chervil, spinach, parsley, thyme, sorrel):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, lettuce, chervil, spinach, parsley, thyme, 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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