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Soupe a LA Julienne

A vegetable soup with celery, carrots, turnips, leeks, lettuce, onions, butter, optional asparagus, sorrel, 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 hearts of 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 helping them soften gently without browning.
Leeks
Add a mild onion-like aroma and soft body as they cook down.
Carrots
Contribute natural sweetness and colour, and hold their shape well in strips.
Celery
Adds a fresh, savoury aroma and a crisp-tender texture when cooked gently.
Sugar
Balances any bitterness in the vegetables, rounding out the flavour.

The step that matters

Cook the vegetables gently over low heat. Cooking over low heat softens the julienned vegetables evenly and keeps the butter from browning or scorching, which would make the soup taste bitter. Adding gravy gradually keeps the mixture moist without boiling away the delicate 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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