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Brunoise Soup

A soup made with finely diced turnips, carrots, onion, leek, butter, sugar, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Brunoise Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel, scrape, wash, and cut the turnips, carrots, onion, and leek into very small pieces.

  2. In a stewpan, combine the vegetables with butter and sugar.

  3. Cook until the vegetables are light golden brown, stirring with a wooden spoon to prevent burning.

Simmer and serve

  1. Add the stock and let it boil gently for 30 minutes.

  2. Serve hot.

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + leektop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,326 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

  5. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 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

Turnips
Provide the main body of the soup and a mild, slightly sweet vegetable flavour.
Carrots
Add sweetness and colour to the soup as they soften during cooking.
Onion
Builds savoury depth as it browns gently in the butter and sugar.
Leek
Adds a mild onion-like aroma and soft texture to the vegetable base.
Butter
Carries flavour and helps the vegetables brown gently in the pan.
Sugar
Promotes browning of the vegetables and adds a touch of sweetness.

The step that matters

Cooking the vegetables until light golden brown. Stirring with a wooden spoon prevents the sugar and vegetables from scorching. Browning builds flavour, but burnt sugar turns bitter and spoils the soup.

Swap the onion

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

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

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