Skip to main content
Main

French Vegetable Soup

A soup made with carrots, turnips, leeks, peas, stock, butter, cream, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

French Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the carrots and turnips into small pieces.

  2. Slice the onions and leeks.

Make the soup

  1. Add all the vegetables and soaked peas to the stock.

  2. Boil slowly for 3.5 hours.

  3. Add the butter and strain through a sieve.

  4. Boil again for 5 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Beat the egg yolks and place them in a tureen with the cream.

  2. Gradually pour in the soup.

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 + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Leek + peastop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together249 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Carrot + peastop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,994 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the soup gently and give it a smooth, rich body when warmed.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky texture that softens the soup's flavour.
Butter
Adds fat for a rounder, smoother mouthfeel and a richer finish.
Peas
Contribute body and natural sweetness, thickening the soup slightly as they break down.
Leeks
Provide a mild onion-like aroma and savoury depth to the base.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and colour, and body as they soften in the stock.

The step that matters

Gradually pour the soup into the egg yolks and cream. Egg yolks scramble if they meet hot liquid all at once. Adding the hot soup slowly warms the yolks gradually, so they thicken the soup smoothly instead of curdling.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, butter, cream, leek, egg):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Almondfits about as well
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, butter, cream, leek, egg. 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

Green PeasGreen Peas229 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesTurnip SoupTurnip Soup43 recipesGreen Peas SoupGreen Peas Soup35 recipes