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Soup

Julienne Soup

A soup of julienned carrots, turnips, leeks, onions, and celery simmered in butter with salt and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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. Cut equal quantities of carrots, turnips, leeks, onions, and heads of celery into thin slices, each about 1 inch long.

Braise

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter over low heat.

  2. Add the sliced vegetables, salt, and powdered sugar to the stewpan.

  3. Braise the vegetables slowly until tender.

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

Butter
Melts to coat the vegetables and carry flavor while they soften gently in the pan.
Carrots
Provide bulk, natural sweetness, and body to the soup as they soften.
Leeks
Contribute a mild onion flavor and tender texture after slow braising.
Powdered sugar
Adds a little sweetness that helps the vegetables brown lightly and taste rounder.

The step that matters

Braise the vegetables slowly until tender. Low, slow heat softens the vegetables evenly and draws out their sweetness without scorching the butter or browning them too fast. Rushing with high heat can burn the sugar and leave the vegetables tough in the center.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, carrot, turnip, leek, celery, sugar):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

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