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Soup

Julienne Soup

A soup of julienned carrots, turnips, leeks, onions, and celery, browned in butter with salt and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 vegetables into thin slices, each about an inch long.

Braise

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter over low heat.

  2. Add the sliced vegetables, salt, and powdered sugar.

  3. Braise the vegetables slowly until they begin to soften.

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

Butter
Melts to coat the vegetables and carry flavor, adding richness during gentle braising.
Carrots
Provide the main bulk, sweetness and color of the soup.
Turnips
Add bulk and a mild, slightly peppery sweetness to the soup.
Leeks
Add a mild onion-like aroma and body to the soup.
Onions
Add aroma and savory depth as they soften in the butter.
Powdered sugar
Encourages browning and rounds out the vegetables' sweetness.

The step that matters

Braise the vegetables slowly until they begin to soften. Low heat draws out moisture and sweetness gently. If the heat is too high, the butter and sugar can scorch before the vegetables soften, leaving bitter flavors.

Swap the onion

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

  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. 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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