Skip to main content
Main

Julienne Soup

A light vegetable soup with julienned carrots, leeks, and celery simmered in broth and seasoned with tarragon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Julienne Soup

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the soup

  1. Bring the vegetable broth to a boil in a pot.

  2. Add the julienned vegetables and cook until tender, about 10 minutes.

  3. Stir in the tarragon, salt, and pepper.

Serve

  1. Serve hot, garnished with fresh herbs if desired.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Celery + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together456 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Carrot + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Leek + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Leek + tarragontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together51 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

Vegetable broth
Forms the liquid base and carries the flavour of the soup.
Julienned vegetables
Provide the main texture and body as they soften in the broth.
Dried tarragon
Adds a light, anise-like aroma that flavours the broth.

The step that matters

Cooking the julienned vegetables until tender. Thin julienne cuts cook quickly and can turn mushy if overcooked. Checking for tenderness at about 10 minutes keeps the vegetables firm enough to hold their shape while fully softened.

Swap the leek

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, celery, tarragon, pepper):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Leekthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, celery, tarragon, 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.

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesLeek SoupLeek Soup31 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipes