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Soup

Julienne Soup

A vegetable soup made with shredded carrots, turnips, celery, leeks, onions, cabbage, sorrel, tarragon, chervil, 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

  1. Cut the carrots, turnips, celery, leeks, and onions into thin shreds about 1 inch long.

Make the soup

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter over low heat, add the vegetables, salt, and sugar, and stir lightly until they are a very light color.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a soup pot, add enough clear stock for the desired quantity of soup, and bring to a boil.

  3. Remove the pot from heat to let the scum and grease rise to the surface, skimming them off as they appear.

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

  5. Allow the soup to simmer until the vegetables are tender, then 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

Butter
Melts to gently cook the vegetables in fat, carrying flavor without browning them.
Carrots
Add sweetness and color, and hold their shape as thin shreds through simmering.
Turnips
Contribute a mild, slightly peppery sweetness and tender body to the broth.
Leeks
Build a mild onion-like aroma and sweetness as they soften in butter.
Cabbage lettuces
Add tender leafy texture and fresh vegetable flavor when added near the end.

The step that matters

Stir the vegetables in butter only until very light in color. Over-browning the shreds adds bitter, toasted notes and changes the clear, delicate flavor this soup depends on. Low heat and light stirring keep the vegetables sweet and pale.

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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