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Julienne Soup

A vegetable soup made with onions, turnip, carrot, celery, peas, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 base

  1. Sauté the shredded onions in butter until brown.

  2. Add mace, salt, pepper, and a spoonful of stock.

  3. Mix flour with a little butter until smooth and fry the mixture with the onions.

  4. Strain the mixture through a colander.

  5. Add more stock if desired.

Cook the vegetables and finish

  1. Boil the turnip, carrot, and celery fillets with green peas in water until tender.

  2. Add the boiled vegetables and their water to the soup.

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. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Onion + turniptop 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

Onions
Sweetness and savory depth as they brown in the butter.
Flour
Thickens the soup and gives it body once fried with the butter.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the onions brown and the flour cook.
Stock
Provides the main liquid and savory flavor of the soup.
Turnip
Adds mild, slightly sweet vegetable flavor and texture as it softens.

The step that matters

Fry the flour with the onions. Flour must be cooked in fat until smooth before liquid is added, or it stays starchy and forms lumps. Cooking it also removes raw flour taste and lets the soup thicken evenly.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, pepper, flour, turnip, carrot, celery. 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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