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Julienne Soup

A beef broth with julienned carrots, turnips, celery, onions, and pot-herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Julienne Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Boil the beef in 1½ gallons of water for 6 hours.

  2. Strain the broth through a colander and then through muslin to clear it.

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Cut the carrots into long thin pieces.

  2. Prepare the rest of the vegetables as usual.

Cook the soup

  1. In another pot, boil 2 quarts of water and add the carrots, turnips, celery, onions, and pot-herbs.

  2. When boiling, add 1 tablespoon of salt and pepper to taste.

  3. Tie the pot-herbs and celery tops together and remove them 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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 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

Beef
Long simmering releases flavour and gelatin into the water, forming the body of the broth.
Carrots
Add sweetness and colour, and hold their shape well in the simmered soup.
Turnips
Contribute a mild, slightly peppery sweetness and firm texture to the soup.
Onions
Add savoury depth and aroma as they soften and release sugars during simmering.
Celery
Adds aromatic, savoury flavour to the broth while the vegetables cook.

The step that matters

Straining the broth through muslin. Fine straining removes suspended particles left by long boiling, so the broth stays clear rather than cloudy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, turnip, celery, pepper):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, celery, 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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