Name: Julienne Soup
Ingredients: 4 lbs beef; 1½ gallons water; 4 large carrots; 2 turnips; 1 head of celery; 4 onions; 1 bunch of pot-herbs; 1 tablespoon salt; pepper to taste

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 broth

Boil the beef in 1½ gallons of water for 6 hours.
Strain the broth through a colander and then through muslin to clear it.

Prepare the vegetables

In a separate pot, boil 2 quarts of water and add the carrots, turnips, celery, onions, and pot-herbs.
When it begins to boil, add 1 tablespoon of salt and pepper to taste.
Cut the carrots into long thin pieces.
Tie the pot-herbs and celery tops together and remove them before serving.

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.

Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,173 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,418 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

Beef: Slow boiling releases flavor and gelatin into the water, giving the broth body.
Carrots: Add sweetness and color, and hold their shape in the finished soup.
Turnips: Contribute mild, slightly sweet flavor and firm texture to the vegetables.
Onions: Add savory depth and aroma as they soften and flavor the broth.
Celery: Adds aromatic, savory flavor to the soup as it simmers.

Swap the onion

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

Parsnipfits better
Leekfits better
Spinachfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, celery, 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.