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Soup À LA Julienne

A vegetable soup with carrots, turnips, celery, onions, leeks, and broth, seasoned with butter, salt, pepper, and a touch of sugar.

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 ↓

Soup À LA Julienne

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Cut the carrots and turnips into narrow slices or ribbons.

  2. Chop the celery, onions, and leeks into pieces about 1 inch long and ¼ inch wide.

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan.

  2. Add the vegetables to the melted butter.

  3. Fry the vegetables over low heat, stirring gently until they are nicely browned.

  4. Moisten the vegetables with broth.

  5. Season with salt and pepper.

  6. Let the soup boil gently, skimming off any fat that rises.

  7. Add a little sugar.

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 + celerytop 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. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 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 fry the vegetables and adds richness and flavor to the soup.
Carrots
Add sweetness and color, and hold their shape in the julienne cut.
Turnips
Add mild, slightly sweet flavor and body to the vegetable base.
Celery
Adds aromatic flavor and a crisp-tender texture to the soup.
Onions
Add savory depth and sweetness as they brown in the butter.
Leeks
Add a mild onion-like aroma and sweetness to the broth.

The step that matters

Frying the vegetables over low heat until nicely browned. Gentle heat browns the vegetables slowly, building sweet, savory flavor through browning reactions without scorching them. Too much heat burns the butter and sugars and makes the soup taste bitter.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, carrot, turnip, celery, leek, veal, pepper. 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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