Name: Soupe a LA Cressi
Ingredients: 12 carrots, peeled; 2 turnips, peeled; inside of 4 leeks; 4 heads of celery, chopped; 2 onions, chopped; 2 ounces fresh butter; ½ pound lean ham; 2 quarts consomme; crumbs of bread, for frying

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 ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare

Mince the carrots, turnips, leeks, celery, and onions together.
In a stewpan, melt the butter and add the ham at the bottom.

Make the soup

Layer the minced vegetables over the ham, cover the stewpan, and set it over low heat.
Let it soak for 2 hours, stirring occasionally with a wooden spoon.
Add the consomme and let it boil slowly for 1 hour.
Skim off all the fat and strain the soup through a fine sieve.
Return the soup to a clean stewpan and keep it warm to skim off any remaining grease.

Serve

Fry the bread crumbs in butter until golden and add them to the soup when 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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together10,172 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Turnip + leektop 2% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together1,046 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Carrot + turniptop 2% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together8,001 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Butter + breadtop 3% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together27,145 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Ham + breadtop 3% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together2,536 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Carrots: Add sweetness and body to the soup as they soften and break down.
Leeks: Contribute a mild onion flavour that builds the base of the soup.
Lean ham: Releases savoury flavour into the butter and vegetables during the slow soak.
Consomme: Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the vegetables and ham.

The step that matters

Skimming the fat. Fat left on the surface makes the soup greasy and dull, so skimming before and after straining gives a clean, clear result.

Flavor stand-ins for the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, leek, celery, onion, butter, ham, bread):

Potatobetter flavor fit
Turnipthe original
Tomatoabout as good a flavor fit
Asparagusabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, leek, celery, onion, butter, ham, bread. 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.