Name: Julienne Soup
Ingredients: 2 quarts stock; 2 carrots; 1 turnip; White part of 1 head of celery; 2 onions or 6 young leeks; A few pieces of cauliflower; 1 head of lettuce; 2 tablespoons peas; A few heads of asparagus

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

Prepare

Prepare the stock according to the previous recipe and remove the fat.
In a soup kettle, add the stock.
Cut the carrots and turnip into fancy shapes or strips.
Chop the onion into tiny pieces and cut the celery into ½‑inch pieces.
Divide the cauliflower into florets.

Cook and serve

Cover all the vegetables with boiling water and boil for 15 minutes.
Drain the vegetables in a colander and add them to the stock.
Simmer gently for 1 hour.
Add the asparagus heads and simmer for 10 minutes.
Tear the lettuce into pieces the size of a half dollar and cook for 5 minutes.
Season with salt and pepper, then serve.

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.

Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,173 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Turnip + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together526 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Turnip + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together286 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Cauliflower + asparagustop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together163 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Carrots: Hold their shape in the soup and add sweetness and colour.
Celery: Adds aromatic flavour to the stock as it simmers.
Cauliflower: Adds body and mild flavour as it softens in the broth.
Lettuce: Wilts quickly and adds soft texture and fresh green flavour.

Swap the onion

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

Leekfits better
Beetrootfits better
Endivefits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, celery, cauliflower, lettuce, peas, asparagus. 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.