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Julienne Soup

A vegetable soup of shredded carrots, turnips, celery, onions, leeks, cabbage, and parsley simmered in clear stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Julienne Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Wash and dry the vegetables, then cut them into thin shreds, about 1 inch long.

Make the soup

  1. In a stew‑pan, melt the butter over low heat and add the vegetable shreds and a small pinch of sugar. Stir until slightly browned.

  2. Pour in the clear stock and simmer gently for 1 hour, or until the vegetables are tender.

  3. Remove any scum and fat from the surface.

  4. Half an hour before the soup is done, add 2 lumps of sugar, 2 pinches of salt, 2 pinches of pepper, the cabbage lettuces, and the parsley leaves (previously immersed in boiling water for 1 minute).

  5. Boil for an additional 30 minutes, skim carefully, and serve with diced fried bread.

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. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 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

Carrots
Adds sweetness, colour and body to the soup as they soften in the stock.
Turnips
Contribute a mild sweetness and soft texture as they cook in the stock.
Butter
Carries the vegetables' flavour and helps them brown lightly at the start.
Clear stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the vegetables.
Cabbage lettuces
Add leafy body and a fresh, green flavour near the end of cooking.
Onions
Add savoury depth and aroma as they soften and sweeten in the stock.

The step that matters

Simmering the vegetables gently. A gentle simmer lets the shreds soften evenly and keeps the stock clear. A hard boil breaks up the vegetables and makes the soup cloudy.

Swap the leek

The recipe marks leek as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, celery, onion, butter, sugar, pepper):

  1. Leekthe original
  2. Parsnipfits about as well
  3. Okrafits less well
  4. Mustardfits less well

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