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Julienne Soup

A vegetable soup with julienne‑cut carrots, turnips, celery, onions, leeks, cabbage, sorrel, chervil, and fried bread cubes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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 ↓

Julienne Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Wash and dry the vegetables, then cut them into thin shreds, no longer than 1 inch.

  2. In a stewpan, melt the butter over low heat and add the vegetable shreds and a pinch of sugar.

  3. Stir until slightly browned.

Simmer the soup

  1. Pour in the clear stock and simmer gently for 1 hour, or until the vegetables are tender.

  2. Skim off any scum and grease.

  3. Half an hour before serving, add the sugar, salt, pepper, cabbage lettuces, sorrel, and chervil, which should be cut similarly and briefly immersed in boiling water.

  4. Boil for an additional 30 minutes.

  5. Skim carefully.

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

  2. Serve with fried bread cubes.

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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Carrots
Provide sweetness, colour and body as the main shredded vegetable in the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and, when the shreds are gently browned, a deeper savoury flavour.
Clear stock
Forms the liquid base and carries the flavour of the vegetables.
Cabbage lettuces
Add tender leafy texture and a mild, fresh vegetable flavour near the end of cooking.
Sorrel
Adds a bright, lemony acidity that lifts the flavour of the soup.
Chervil
Adds a delicate, fresh herbal aroma at the end of cooking.

The step that matters

Browning the shredded vegetables in butter. Stirring the vegetables in butter until only slightly browned develops savoury, caramelised flavour through the Maillard reaction. Browning too far, or too quickly on high heat, can turn them bitter and colour the clear stock.

Swap the onion

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

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

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