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Spring Soup and Soup a LA Julienne

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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. In a large pot, combine the broth, turnips, carrots, celery, leeks, and onions.

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

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

  4. Stir in the asparagus points and green beans.

Julienne method

  1. For Julienne soup, first sauté the carrots and other vegetables in butter until tender, then add the boiling stock and skim off any fat.

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

Carrots
Provide sweetness and colour, and hold their shape as thin julienne strips.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and body to the broth as they soften.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour when the vegetables are sautéed first.
Lettuce
Adds soft, tender leafy body and a gentle vegetable flavour to the broth.
Asparagus points
Add delicate vegetable flavour and a tender bite to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Sautéing the vegetables in butter before adding the stock. Cooking the vegetables gently in butter until tender softens them and builds flavour before the liquid goes in. Adding boiling stock too early or too hot leaves them raw and dulls the taste. Skimming off surface fat afterwards keeps the broth clear and light.

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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