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Menu for a Party of Eight

A vegetable consomme made with carrots, turnips, leeks, onions, celery, butter, sugar, pepper, salt, broth, lettuce, and sorrel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Menu for a Party of Eight

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Cut the carrots, turnips, leeks, onions, and celery into thin strips, no more than ⅛ inch across and 1 inch long.

  2. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  3. Add the vegetable strips, powdered sugar, pepper, and salt.

  4. Toss lightly for about 5 minutes until they slightly color.

  5. Cover the vegetables with a little broth from the consomme.

  6. Remove any grease from the butter.

Finish and serve

  1. Keep the cooked vegetables warm near the fire until serving.

  2. Just before serving, add the vegetables, finely shredded lettuce, and sorrel to the boiling consomme.

  3. Skim the consomme.

  4. Serve.

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 + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 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, turnips, leeks, onions, and celery
Provide the bulk of the vegetable garnish, adding flavor and a tender-crisp bite.
Butter
Carries flavor and helps the vegetables brown slightly while they are tossed.
Powdered sugar
Adds a little sweetness and encourages gentle browning of the vegetables.
Lettuce
Adds fresh, mild leafy texture to the finished consommé.

The step that matters

Toss the vegetables gently until they only slightly color. Sugar and vegetable sugars brown quickly over heat, so overcooking turns them bitter and dark, muddying the clear consommé.

Swap the onion

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

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

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