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Soupe a LA Julienne

A vegetable soup with celery, carrots, turnips, leeks, lettuce, button onions, butter, sugar, broth, and crusty bread.

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

  1. Cut the vegetables into small pieces: celery, carrots, turnips, leeks, and lettuce hearts.

  2. Peel the button onions carefully to keep their shape.

  3. Soak the bread pieces in the broth.

Cook

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan over low heat.

  2. Add the vegetables and any seasonal options, along with sorrel and sugar.

  3. Stir and cook gently, adding a little gravy as needed.

  4. When the vegetables are nearly cooked, add the soaked bread and warm everything together in the broth.

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 giving a rich, smooth body.
Leeks
Add mild onion flavour and sweetness as they soften gently in the butter.
Lettuce hearts
Soften during gentle cooking and contribute body and a delicate vegetable sweetness.
Crusty bread
Soaked in broth, it thickens the soup and gives it a soft, substantial texture.

The step that matters

Cook the vegetables gently over low heat. Low, gentle heat softens the vegetables evenly in butter without browning or scorching them, keeping the soup pale, sweet and smooth.

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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