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Soup

Potage Julienne Au Consomme

A consommé-based vegetable soup with carrots, turnips, celery, onions, leeks, lettuce, and sorrel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Potage Julienne Au Consomme

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Cut the carrots, turnips, celery, onions, and leeks into narrow strips.

Brown and simmer

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and add the vegetables and sugar.

  2. Cook until the vegetables are well browned.

  3. Add the consommé and simmer for 3 hours.

  4. Ten minutes before serving, add the scalded lettuce and sorrel.

Finish and serve

  1. When ready to serve, skim and strain 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. 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. Turnip + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together526 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Leek + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together217 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 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
Fat that carries the vegetables' flavour and helps them brown in the pan.
Leeks
Mild onion-like aroma that builds the soup's savoury base as they cook.
Sugar
Encourages browning of the vegetables and adds a touch of sweetness.
Sorrel
Adds a bright, sharp, acidic note that lifts the rich broth.

The step that matters

Browning the vegetables. Cooking the vegetables until well browned develops deep, roasted flavours through the Maillard reaction and caramelisation. Pale vegetables give a flat, washed-out broth, so the colour must be developed before the consommé is added.

Swap the onion

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

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

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