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Soup Jardiniere

A French vegetable soup with carrots, turnip, celery, shallot, asparagus, peas, and cream, served over fried bread.

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

Soup Jardiniere

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil 1 quart of water in a kettle.

  2. Fry a slice of stale bread in butter until richly browned.

  3. Cut the fried bread into triangles.

  4. Clean and dice the carrots, turnip, celery, and shallot.

Make the soup

  1. Add the diced vegetables, green peas, asparagus, and pot herbs to the boiling water with the sugar.

  2. Cook until the vegetables are tender.

  3. Season the soup with pepper and salt.

  4. Stir in ½ cup of cream.

Serve

  1. Place the fried bread triangles in a tureen.

  2. Pour the hot soup over the bread.

  3. Serve immediately.

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 + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together202 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. Shallot + asparagustop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together137 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 as the vegetables soften in the broth.
Green peas
Contribute sweetness and a soft, tender texture to the soup.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the soup a smoother, silkier mouthfeel.
Stale bread
Fried in butter until browned, it adds toasty flavour and a crisp, sturdy base for the soup.
Lump sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the savoury vegetables and broth.

The step that matters

Frying the bread until richly browned. Browning in butter relies on the Maillard reaction, which builds toasty flavour. Pale bread tastes flat and turns soggy when the hot soup is poured over it, so it needs full colour without burning.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, celery, shallot, asparagus, sugar, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, celery, shallot, asparagus, 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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