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Julienne Soup

A vegetable soup made with onions, butter, mace, salt, pepper, stock, flour, turnip, carrot, celery, and peas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 soup base

  1. Fry the shredded onions in butter until brown.

  2. Add mace, salt, pepper, and stock; mix well.

  3. Rub flour smooth with a little butter and fry with the onions.

  4. Strain the mixture through a colander and add more stock as desired.

Add the vegetables

  1. Boil turnip, carrot, celery, and peas in a little water until tender.

  2. Add the boiled vegetables and their water to 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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  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

Onions
Browning in butter builds the savoury, sweet base of the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks with the fat and onions.
Butter
Carries the onions as they brown and adds richness to the base.
Turnip
Adds body and a mild sweetness to the soup as it cooks tender.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and body to the soup as it cooks tender.

The step that matters

Rub flour smooth with a little butter. Flour lumps form if it is added without being worked smooth in fat first. Cooking it briefly in the butter also removes raw flour taste and helps it thicken the soup evenly.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, pepper, flour, turnip, carrot, celery. 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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