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Spring Soup and Soup a LA Julienne

A vegetable soup made with broth, turnips, carrots, celery, leeks, lettuce, sorrel, asparagus, French beans, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and sorrel match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 317 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Spring Soup and Soup a LA Julienne

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. In a large pot, combine the broth with turnips, carrots, celery, and leeks or onions.

  2. Simmer for 20 to 30 minutes until vegetables are tender.

  3. Add the lettuce and sorrel, and continue boiling until tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, stir in the asparagus and French beans or green peas.

  2. For Julienne soup, sauté the carrots in butter until tender, then add the boiling stock and skim off the fat.

  3. Finish with the same method as above.

  4. Optionally, add chervil, spinach, green onions, or small tufts of broccoli or cauliflower.

  5. Serve with small rounds of dried bread, 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. Lettuce + sorreltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together317 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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Turnips
Soften during simmering and add body and mild sweetness to the broth.
Carrots
Add sweetness and colour, and hold their shape when cut into fine strips.
Leeks or onions
Add a mild aromatic base that flavours the broth as it simmers.
Lettuce
Wilts into the broth, adding soft texture and a gentle vegetal flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour when the carrots are sautéed.

The step that matters

Skimming the fat after adding the stock to the sautéed carrots. Butter and fat rise to the surface of hot stock and can make the soup greasy and cloudy if not removed. Skimming keeps the broth clear and light.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, turnip, carrot, leek, lettuce, sorrel, asparagus):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Celerythe original
  4. Parsleyfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, turnip, carrot, leek, lettuce, sorrel, asparagus. 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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