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Soup

A Julienne Soup

A soup of shredded onion, turnip, celery, and carrots simmered in butter and seasoned with pepper and coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot 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 ↓

A Julienne Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Melt the butter in a 3‑pint saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Add the shredded onion, turnip, celery, and carrots.

  3. Cook the vegetables for 10 minutes without browning.

Finish the soup

  1. Strain the soup into the saucepan with the vegetables.

  2. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Simmer until the vegetables are tender.

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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 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, carrying flavour through the vegetables as they cook.
Onion
Softens gently and turns sweet and aromatic as it cooks without browning.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body as they soften during simmering.
Turnip
Adds mild flavour and a tender texture once simmered.

The step that matters

Cooking the vegetables without browning. Gentle cooking softens the vegetables and draws out their natural sweetness. Browning would add bitter, toasted flavours that change the clear, delicate character of the soup.

Swap the onion

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

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

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

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