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Spring Soup and Soup a LA Julienne

A clear vegetable soup with turnips, carrots, celery, leeks, lettuce, sorrel, asparagus, French beans, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and sorrel match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 317 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Spring Soup and Soup a LA Julienne

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Combine the broth, turnips, carrots, celery, leeks, and onions in a large pot.

  2. Simmer for 20 to 30 minutes until the vegetables are tender.

  3. Add the lettuce and sorrel, and continue boiling until tender.

  4. Just before serving, stir in the asparagus and French beans (or green peas).

Make the julienne version

  1. For Julienne soup, first sauté the carrots and other vegetables in butter until tender.

  2. Pour the boiling stock over the sautéed vegetables, skim off the fat, and finish as above.

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. Lettuce + sorreltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together317 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Leek + sorreltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together112 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + sorreltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together179 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Broth
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the whole soup.
Butter
Enriches the flavour and carries aroma when the vegetables are sautéed.
Lettuce
Softens as it boils, adding body and a mild, green flavour to the broth.
Sorrel
Adds a sharp, acidic note that brightens the soup.

The step that matters

Sautéing the vegetables in butter until tender. Cooking the vegetables gently in butter before adding the stock builds flavour and fat-soluble aroma, but browning or overheating can make the butter taste bitter and the vegetables uneven.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, turnip, carrot, leek, lettuce, sorrel, asparagus):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Celerythe original
  4. Parsleyfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, turnip, carrot, leek, lettuce, sorrel, asparagus. 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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