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Soup

Soupe a LA Julienne

A vegetable soup made with julienned celery, carrots, turnips, leeks, lettuce, button onions, optional asparagus and sorrel, butter, sugar, and gravy.

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 ↓

Soupe a LA Julienne

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Cut the celery, carrots, turnips, leeks, and lettuce into thin strips or dice.

  2. Pare the button onions carefully to preserve their shape.

Cook the soup

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

  2. Add the prepared vegetables and any seasonal vegetables, including asparagus and sorrel.

  3. Stir the mixture and cook gently, adding a little gravy as needed.

  4. Add a lump of sugar to balance any bitterness.

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. Turnip + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together526 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Leek + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together217 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 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, carrying flavour and adding richness as they cook gently.
Celery
Adds aromatic flavour and a crisp texture that softens during gentle cooking.
Carrots
Provide sweetness and colour, and soften into the soup as they cook.
Leeks
Contribute a mild onion-like aroma and body to the soup base.
Lettuce hearts
Wilt quickly, adding moisture and a soft, tender texture to the soup.

The step that matters

Cook the vegetables gently in the butter. Low heat softens the vegetables in their own moisture and fat without browning them, keeping the soup pale, delicate and sweet. High heat would scorch the butter and toughen the strips.

Swap the asparagus

The recipe marks asparagus as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, carrot, turnip, leek, lettuce, onion, butter):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Asparagusthe original

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