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Julienne Soup

A light soup of white stock, spinach, sorrel, and a creamy egg yolk mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Spinach and sorrel match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 204 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Julienne Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Put 2 quarts of white stock into a clean saucepan.

  2. Add a handful of coarsely shredded spinach and a few leaves of sorrel.

  3. Let these stew in the stock until tender.

  4. Add pepper, coarse sea salt, and ½ teaspoon of sugar.

Finish and serve

  1. In a bowl, beat together ½ pint of cream or 1 pint of milk with the yolks of 4 eggs.

  2. Just before serving, mix the egg and cream mixture with the soup.

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. Spinach + sorreltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together204 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Spinach + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Sorrel + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together419 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Sorrel + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together235 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the soup and add richness when gently combined with the cream.
Cream or milk
Adds fat and body, giving the soup a smooth, rich texture.
Spinach
Provides leafy vegetable flavour and body as it stews in the stock.
Sorrel
Adds a sharp, lemony acidity that brightens the soup.

The step that matters

Just before serving, mix the egg and cream mixture with the soup.. Egg yolks thicken when heated, so if the soup is too hot when they are added they can curdle and turn grainy. Adding them off the heat, just before serving, keeps the texture smooth.

Swap the spinach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sorrel, pepper, sugar, cream, egg):

  1. Spinachthe original
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Chivefits less well
  4. Asparagusfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sorrel, pepper, sugar, cream, egg. 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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