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Julienne Soup

A vegetable soup made with cabbage, celery, carrot, onion, turnip, and leek, simmered in stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 the vegetables

  1. Boil the carrot in boiling water with a little salt and sugar until tender.

  2. Boil the turnip in boiling water with a little salt and sugar until tender.

  3. Boil the leek in boiling water with a little salt and sugar until tender.

  4. Boil the celery in boiling water with a little salt and sugar until tender.

  5. Shred the cabbage.

  6. Boil the shredded cabbage for a few minutes, adding a small bit of baking soda to maintain its color.

  7. Drain all the vegetables.

Serve

  1. Place the drained vegetables in a tureen.

  2. Pour boiling stock over the vegetables in the tureen.

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. Celery + carrottop 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. Cabbage + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Celery + turniptop 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

Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the soup and becomes tender through brief boiling.
Baking soda
Helps cabbage keep its green color during boiling by raising the water's alkalinity.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and color as it softens in the broth.
Turnip
Adds a mild, slightly sweet flavor and firm texture once cooked.

The step that matters

Boiling the cabbage with baking soda. Baking soda makes the water alkaline, which keeps cabbage green, but too much or too long a boil can turn it mushy and give it a soapy taste. Boil briefly and drain promptly.

Swap the onion

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

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

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