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Julienne Soup

A vegetable soup made with onions, mace, flour, and julienned turnip, carrot, celery, and peas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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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 onion base

  1. Chop the onions.

  2. Fry the onions in butter until brown.

  3. Add mace, salt, and pepper.

  4. Stir in a spoonful of stock.

  5. Mix flour with a little butter until smooth. Add the flour mixture to the onions.

  6. Let the onions fry with the flour.

  7. Strain the mixture through a colander.

  8. Add more stock if desired.

Add the vegetables

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

  2. Add the boiled vegetables and their water to the soup.

  3. Boil the onions with the vegetables.

Notes

  1. Omit the flour for a clear 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
Caramelise during frying to give the soup its sweetness and deep colour.
Butter
Fat that carries the onion flavour and helps the onions brown.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, lightly body soup when cooked with the onions.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries the flavour of the vegetables.
Turnip
Adds body and a mild, earthy sweetness as it softens in the soup.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and colour while softening into tender pieces.

The step that matters

Let the onions fry with the flour. Cooking the flour in the onion fat removes its raw taste and lets it thicken the liquid evenly. Stopping too early leaves a pasty flavour and lumps.

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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