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Soup a LA Julienne

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

Soup a LA Julienne

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

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

  2. Divide the celery, onions, and leeks, cutting them about 1 inch long and ¼ inch wide.

Cook the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan.

  2. Add the vegetables.

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

  4. Moisten the vegetables with veal gravy or broth, and season with salt and pepper.

  5. Let it boil gently, skimming off any fat that rises.

  6. Add a little sugar to reduce the bitterness of the vegetables.

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

Carrots
Provide sweetness and colour, and body once simmered in the broth.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and a firm texture that holds its shape in the soup.
Butter
Carries the frying step, adding richness and helping the vegetables brown.
Onions
Add savoury depth and aroma, and brown during frying to build flavour.
Veal gravy or chicken/mutton broth
Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries the vegetable flavour.

The step that matters

Frying the vegetables until browned. Browning over low heat, with gentle stirring, builds deep flavour through Maillard reactions. Heat that is too high can scorch the vegetables and make the soup bitter.

Swap the onion

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

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

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