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Soup

Julienne Soup

A beef stock soup with butter, onions, carrots, turnips, celery, string beans, and peas, seasoned with mace, pepper, salt, and optional soy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Julienne Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a soup kettle.

  2. Fry the chopped onions until browned.

  3. Add the beef stock, mace, pepper, and salt; bring to a boil.

  4. Simmer for one hour.

Add the vegetables and finish

  1. Add the carrots, turnips, celery, string beans, and green peas.

  2. Let it boil for two hours.

  3. If the soup is not bright and clear, stir in the soy sauce.

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 + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Beef stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the whole soup.
Onions
Browning them first adds deep, savoury sweetness to the broth.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body as they soften during the long simmer.
Turnips
Soften during the long simmer, adding body and a mild earthy flavour.
Green peas
Add fresh sweetness and soft texture to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Keeping the boil long but gentle after adding the vegetables. Vegetables added to a hard, rolling boil for two hours can break down and turn the soup cloudy and mushy. A steady simmer keeps the broth clearer and the pieces intact, which is why the record notes soy sauce as a fix for cloudiness.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, onion, beef, pepper, carrot, turnip. 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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