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
Fry the shredded onions in butter until brown.
Add mace, salt, and pepper.
Stir in a spoonful of stock.
Mix flour with a little butter until smooth and fry the flour mixture with the onions.
Strain the mixture through a colander.
Add more stock if desired.
Add the vegetables
Boil the turnip, carrot, celery, and peas in a little water until tender.
Add the water and vegetables to the soup.
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.
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Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together10,173 recipes
Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
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Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together8,002 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
-
Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,418 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
-
Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together16,012 recipes
Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
-
Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked 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 a deep, sweet flavour base for the soup.
- Flour
- Fried with butter, it thickens the soup and gives it body.
- Butter
- Fat that carries the frying flavour and helps the onions brown.
- Turnip
- Cut into fillets, it adds mild body and texture as the vegetables cook until tender.
- Carrot
- Cut into fillets, it adds mild sweetness and soft texture to the soup.
The step that matters
Frying the flour mixture with the onions. Cooking flour in fat for a while removes its raw taste and lets it thicken evenly. If it is not stirred well and mixed smooth first, it can form lumps that stay in the soup.
Swap the mace
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, butter, pepper, flour, turnip, carrot, celery):
- Parsleyfits better
- Thymefits better
- Marjoramfits better
- 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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