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A French Soup

A hearty French soup made with beef, veal, fowl, and a variety of root and leafy vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 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 10,172 recipes mention both. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Combine the beef, veal, fowl, and enough water to cover in a large stew pan.

  2. Boil slowly, skimming regularly.

  3. Add the turnips, carrots, onions, leeks, parsnips, celery, parsley roots, basil, burnet, cloves, and salt.

  4. Let the stock boil gently for 8 hours.

  5. Strain and refrigerate overnight to remove the fat.

Finish and serve

  1. The next day, stew chervil, turnips, celery, onions, endive, sorrel, cabbage lettuce, and white beet leaves in 1 cup of the soup until tender.

  2. Add the stewed vegetables to the desired amount of soup.

  3. Serve hot, optionally with a French roll.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together10,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,096 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Turnip + leektop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + parsniptop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together589 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + carrottop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together8,001 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

Coarse beef
Releases flavour and gelatin into the stock during the long simmer.
1 knuckle of veal
Adds body and gelatin, giving the stock a richer mouthfeel.
6 leeks
Contribute mild, sweet onion-like flavour to the stock.
6 turnips
Add mild sweetness and soft texture once stewed in the soup.
6 carrots
Add natural sweetness and colour to the stock.
Sorrel
Adds bright acidity to the finished vegetables.

The step that matters

Refrigerate overnight to remove the fat. Fat solidifies when the stock is chilled, so it can be lifted off the surface. Skipping the chill leaves a greasy broth that is harder to skim cleanly.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, veal, turnip, carrot, leek, parsnip, celery):

  1. Potatoabout as good a flavor fit
  2. Beetrootabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Onionthe original
  4. Lettuceabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, veal, turnip, carrot, leek, parsnip, celery. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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