Skip to main content
Main

Julienne Soup

A light vegetable soup made with carrots, turnip, leek, cabbage, sorrel, chervil, butter, sugar, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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. Wash and finely chop the carrots, turnip, leek, cabbage, sorrel, and chervil.

Make the soup

  1. In a clean saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the chopped vegetables, salt, pepper, and castor sugar; cook until golden.

  3. Pour in 2 quarts of water or clear stock and bring to a boil.

  4. Add the sorrel and chervil, then remove from heat and let simmer for 1 hour.

Serve

  1. Optionally, add green peas, French beans, or boiled rice before serving.

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

Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the vegetables brown in the pan.
Leek
Contributes a mild onion-like aroma and savory depth to the broth.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the soup.
Sorrel
Adds a sharp, lemony acidity that brightens the soup.
Castor sugar
Adds a little sweetness that balances the sharpness of the sorrel.
Water or clear stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavor of the vegetables.

The step that matters

Cook the vegetables until golden. Browning the vegetables in butter develops deeper, toasted flavors through the Maillard reaction. If they burn, the soup tastes bitter, so keep the heat moderate and stir often.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

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

More julienne soup recipes

Clear 4 See all 177 →

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesRed CabbageRed Cabbage65 recipesStewed CabbageStewed Cabbage58 recipesBaked CabbageBaked Cabbage51 recipes