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Soup

Potage a LA Jardiniere

A French vegetable soup made with carrots, turnips, leeks, onions, celery, lettuce, chervil, sorrel, and stock, seasoned with butter, sugar, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 10,172 recipes mention both. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Potage a LA Jardiniere

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Cut the vegetables into thin strips, about ⅛ inch square and 1½ inches long.

Cook

  1. In a saucepan, melt fresh butter and add the vegetables, powdered sugar, pepper, and salt.

  2. Toss the mixture on the fire until it begins to color.

  3. Add shredded lettuce, chervil, and sorrel, and toss for about 5 minutes.

  4. Moisten with stock and keep the soup hot by the fire for 2 hours.

  5. Before serving, add more stock as needed.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together10,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Turnip + leektop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together8,001 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together16,001 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together14,555 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

Carrots, turnips, leeks, onions, and celery
Form the body of the soup and add sweetness and flavor as they color in butter.
Fresh butter
Carries the vegetables in fat and helps them brown lightly without drying.
Lettuce
Adds soft, tender body and fresh, mild flavor once it wilts into the soup.
Stock
Provides the liquid that moistens and gently simmers the vegetables into soup.

The step that matters

Toss the vegetables until they just begin to color. Browning in butter adds depth and sweetness, but too much heat scorches the sugar and milk solids, giving a bitter taste. Stop once they just start to color.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

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

  1. Parsnipbetter flavor fit
  2. Potatobetter flavor fit
  3. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, leek, celery, butter, sugar, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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