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French Vegetable Soup

A hearty vegetable soup made with carrots, turnips, leeks, peas, butter, egg yolks, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

French Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Cut the carrots, turnips, and leeks into small pieces.

Make the soup

  1. Add the vegetables and peas to 4 quarts of boiling water.

  2. Boil over low heat for 3.5 hours.

  3. Add 2 oz of butter and strain through a sieve.

  4. Boil the strained soup again for 5-6 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. In a tureen, add 2 egg yolks and gradually mix in the boiling soup with a little cream.

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. Leek + peastop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together249 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Carrot + peastop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,994 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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, and colour to the finished soup.
Turnips
Contribute bulk and a mild, slightly peppery flavour to the broth.
Leeks
Add a mild onion-like aroma that builds flavour in the broth.
Peas
Thicken the soup as they break down and add sweetness.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the strained soup.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the soup, giving it a smooth, velvety texture.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently but can curdle if the soup is too hot or added all at once. Adding the hot soup gradually to the yolks and cream tempers them, so the liaison stays smooth.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Almondfits about as well
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, leek, butter, egg, cream. 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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