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Soup

Julienne Soup

A vegetable soup with carrots, turnip, potatoes, cabbage, peas, beans, onions, tomatoes, butter or lard, and burnt sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 vegetables

  1. Chop the carrot, turnip, potatoes, cabbage, and any other vegetables into pieces about 1 inch long and ¼ inch thick.

Make the soup

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter or lard over medium heat.

  2. Add the chopped onions and fry until brown.

  3. Stir in the chopped tomatoes and mix well.

  4. Add the prepared vegetables and cover with warm water or stock.

  5. Boil slowly until the vegetables are thoroughly cooked, adding more water if necessary.

  6. Before serving, stir in the burnt sugar.

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. Turnip + cabbagetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Potato + tomatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,798 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

Onions
Frying until brown builds a savoury, deeper flavour base for the soup.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body, blending into the broth as they cook.
Potatoes
Soften during boiling and help thicken the soup slightly as their starch releases.
Butter or lard
Fat for frying the onions, carrying flavour and adding richness to the soup.
Burnt sugar
Adds a deep caramel colour and a slightly bitter, toasted sweetness.

The step that matters

Frying the onions until brown. Browning onions in fat develops deep savoury flavours through the Maillard reaction and caramelisation. Pale onions give a flatter, less rounded soup, so they need patience over medium heat.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, potato, cabbage, butter, onion, tomato):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, potato, cabbage, butter, onion, tomato. 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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