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Julienne Soup

A clear beef vegetable soup with julienned carrots, turnips, celery, string beans, 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

  1. Melt the butter in a large pot over medium heat.

  2. Add the chopped onions and fry until golden brown.

  3. Pour in the beef stock and season with mace, pepper, and salt.

  4. Bring to a boil and simmer for one hour.

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

  6. Continue to boil for two hours.

  7. 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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 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
Frying them until golden brown adds sweetness and savoury depth to the broth.
Beef stock
Forms the liquid base, carrying the flavour of the whole soup.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body as they soften during the long simmer.
Turnips
Soften over the long simmer, adding body and a mild, earthy flavour.
Green peas
Add sweetness and colour to the finished soup.
String beans
Add texture and fresh vegetable flavour to the soup.

The step that matters

Simmering the vegetables for two hours. Boiling vigorously can cloud the broth and break down the vegetables, so a gentle, steady simmer keeps the soup clear and the vegetables intact.

Swap the mace

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

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

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