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Julienne Soup

A vegetable soup with shredded carrots, turnips, onion, leeks, celery, butter, stock, sorrel, chervil, powdered sugar, and diced bread crusts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Sorrel and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 247 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Julienne Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Shred the carrots, turnips, onion, leeks, and celery into small strips about 1¼ inches long.

Make the soup

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

  2. Add the shredded vegetables and fry until they are nicely browned.

  3. Pour in the stock and bring to a simmer.

  4. Once the vegetables are cooked, skim the surface.

  5. Stir in the chopped sorrel and chervil.

  6. Add a little powdered sugar to taste.

Serve

  1. Serve in a soup tureen with diced bread crusts.

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. Sorrel + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together247 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. Leek + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together148 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 hold their shape as julienne strips during simmering.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and body to the broth as they soften.
Butter
Carries the frying of the vegetables and adds richness and browning flavour.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries the flavour of the vegetables.
Onion
Adds savoury depth and aroma as it fries and softens.

The step that matters

Frying the shredded vegetables until nicely browned. Browning through the Maillard reaction builds savoury, roasted flavour in the vegetables and the broth. Fry too little and the soup tastes flat; fry too hard and the thin strips scorch and turn bitter.

Swap the onion

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

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

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