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Brunoise Soup

A vegetable soup with finely diced onion, carrots, turnip, and leek simmered in butter, stock, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Brunoise Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the onion and wash the carrots, turnip, and leek.

  2. Cut all vegetables into very small dice.

Make the soup

  1. In a stewpan, combine the diced vegetables with butter, salt, pepper, and sugar.

  2. Cover and cook over low heat for a few minutes, shaking the pan to prevent burning.

  3. Add the clear stock and bring to a gentle boil for about 30 minutes.

  4. Skim off any fat and serve with toast.

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. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + leektop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,326 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

  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

Butter
Adds fat that softens the diced vegetables and carries flavour in the pan.
Carrots
Provide sweetness and body to the soup as they cook down.
Leek
Adds a mild onion-like aroma and savoury depth to the stock.
Turnip
Contributes a slightly peppery flavour and firm texture to the diced vegetables.

The step that matters

Cook the diced vegetables covered over low heat. Shaking the pan keeps the very small dice from scorching on the base. Low, covered heat softens the vegetables gently so they release flavour into the butter before the stock is added.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, leek, butter, pepper, 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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