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Consomme Julienne

A clear vegetable consommé with julienned turnip, carrot, onion, and celery, seasoned with butter, sugar, salt, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Consomme Julienne

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Make the soup stock clear by letting it settle, removing the fat, and pouring it through a napkin in a colander or jelly bag.

  2. Cut the vegetables into very thin slices, then into shreds about 1-2 inches long.

Make the consommé

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and sugar, then add the vegetables and simmer until they begin to brown.

  2. Pour in the stock and boil for about 30 minutes, skimming while boiling.

  3. Season with salt and cayenne.

  4. If not light brown, add burnt sugar caramel.

  5. For added body, mix starch with broth and stir in.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Soup stock
Forms the clear liquid base that carries the flavour of the consommé.
Butter
Fat that carries flavour and helps the vegetables brown gently in the pan.
Sugar
Encourages the vegetables to brown and adds a little sweetness.
Starch
Thickens the broth slightly to give it more body.

The step that matters

Clearing the stock. Stock must settle, be defatted, and be strained through a fine cloth before boiling. Any fat or particles left in the liquid will cloud the consommé and dull its clarity.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, carrot, celery, butter, sugar. 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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