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Soup

Brunoise Soup

A clear beef broth soup with finely diced carrots, turnip, celeriac, leeks, French beans, and optional peas, finished with butter and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Brunoise Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare 2 ½ pints of clear beef broth.

  2. Cut carrots, turnip, celeriac, and leeks into ¼-inch dice.

  3. Cut French beans into ¼-inch pieces.

  4. Blanch the root vegetables and green vegetables in boiling water.

Make the soup

  1. In a stewpan, melt butter and fry the root vegetables for 5 minutes, stirring constantly.

  2. Add sugar and ½ pint of broth; reduce to a glaze.

  3. Add the remaining broth and simmer gently, skimming off butter as it rises.

  4. Cook peas and French beans separately, then add them to the soup before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Leek + beanstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together51 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Turnip + beanstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together400 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

Beef broth
Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries its flavour.
Butter
Fat that fries the root vegetables and adds richness, with excess skimmed off as it rises.
Carrots
Provide sweetness and colour, and hold their shape in the soup.
Leeks
Add a mild onion-like aroma and savoury depth to the broth.
Sugar
Caramelises with the broth during reduction to a glaze, adding sweetness and colour.

The step that matters

Frying the root vegetables in butter. Stirring constantly over heat keeps the diced vegetables from scorching or browning unevenly, which would make the soup taste bitter and look muddy.

Swap the peas

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, leek, beans, butter, 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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