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Soup

Julienne Soup

A vegetable soup made with shredded carrots, turnips, celery, leeks, onions, cabbage, sorrel, herbs, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 the carrots, turnips, celery, leeks, and onions into thin shreds about 1 inch long.

  2. Melt the butter over low heat in a stewpan.

  3. Add the vegetables, salt, and sugar. Stir lightly until the mixture is a very light color.

  4. Transfer the mixture to a soup pot.

Make the soup

  1. Add enough clear stock for the desired quantity of soup.

  2. Bring the soup to a boil.

  3. Reduce the heat.

  4. Skim off any scum and grease that rises to the surface.

  5. Add the shredded cabbage lettuces, sorrel, tarragon, chervil, and 4 lumps of sugar.

  6. Allow the soup to simmer until the vegetables are tender.

  7. Taste and adjust seasoning 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 + 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 + cabbagetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 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
Provide sweetness, colour and body as the main shredded vegetable.
Turnips
Add a mild, slightly peppery flavour and bulk to the soup.
Leeks
Contribute a gentle onion-like aroma and sweetness when softened in butter.
Butter
Carries fat-soluble flavour and softens the vegetables without browning them.
Cabbage lettuces
Add tender leafy texture and fresh flavour that cooks quickly in the hot broth.

The step that matters

Stir the vegetables only lightly in butter over low heat. Keeping the vegetables a very light colour avoids browning, which would add bitter, toasted flavours and change the clear, delicate character of the soup.

Swap the onion

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

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

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