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Jardiniere Soup

A clear vegetable soup with carrots, turnips, lettuce, onions, stock, sugar, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 526 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Jardiniere Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare your clear stock and bring it to a boil.

  2. Wash and scrape the carrots, peel the turnips and onions.

  3. Leave the onions whole, and cut the turnips and carrots into slices, using fancy cutters for shapes.

  4. Cut the lettuce leaves into fine shreds, about 2 inches long.

Cook and serve

  1. Simmer all the vegetables together until just tender, then strain them carefully.

  2. Add the strained vegetables to the boiling stock and serve immediately.

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 + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together526 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. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Carrot + lettucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together976 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Carrots
Add sweetness and colour, and hold their shape as sliced vegetables in the broth.
Turnips
Contribute a mild, slightly peppery flavour and firm texture once simmered.
Lettuce
Adds fresh, tender leafy body that softens quickly in the hot stock.
Button onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they soften while simmering in the stock.

The step that matters

Simmer until just tender, then strain. Overcooking softens the vegetables and clouds the clear stock, while undercooking leaves them hard. Stopping at just tender keeps each piece firm, with the broth staying clear.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, lettuce, sugar, pepper):

  1. Beetrootfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, lettuce, sugar, 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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