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Brunoise Soup

A clear beef broth soup with diced carrots, turnip, celeriac, leeks, French beans, green peas, butter, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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. Prepare 2 ½ pints of clear beef broth.

  2. Dice the carrots, turnip, celeriac, leeks, and French beans into ¼ inch pieces.

  3. Blanch the diced roots and green vegetables in boiling water.

Make the soup

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter and fry the blanched roots for 5 minutes, stirring constantly.

  2. Add the sugar and ½ pint of broth; reduce to a glaze.

  3. Add the remaining broth and simmer gently, skimming off the butter as it rises.

  4. Cook the peas and French beans separately, then add them to the soup before serving.

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 + turniptop 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. Leek + beanstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together51 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Turnip + beanstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together400 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

Beef broth
Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries the flavour of the vegetables.
Butter
Fat for frying the roots, adding richness and carrying flavour, with excess skimmed off.
Carrots
Provide sweetness and colour as the main diced root vegetable.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the roots brown to a glaze in the pan.
Leeks
Contribute mild onion-like aroma and a soft, tender texture.

The step that matters

Reducing the glaze. Sugar and broth must cook down until the roots take on a glossy glaze; if the liquid is not reduced enough, the vegetables stay pale and the flavour stays thin, and if it reduces too far it can scorch.

Swap the peas

The recipe marks peas as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, turnip, leek, beans, butter, sugar):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

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