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Julienne Soup

A vegetable soup made with sliced carrot, turnip, celery, onions, and stock, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery 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 ↓

Julienne Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Slice the carrot, turnip, celery, and onions.

  2. Fry the slices until brown.

Make the soup

  1. Drain the butter used for frying.

  2. Add 1-2 quarts of stock and let it simmer slowly for at least an hour.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

  4. In summer, add green peas, asparagus tops, or French beans 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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 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. Turnip + oniontop 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

Carrot
Adds sweetness and colour, and holds its shape in the julienne cut.
Turnip
Adds a mildly sharp, earthy flavour to the stock.
Onions
Browning in the fat builds sweet, savoury depth for the broth.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the vegetables.

The step that matters

Frying the slices until brown. Browning the vegetables in butter creates deeper, roasted flavours through the Maillard reaction and caramelisation. Pale slices give a flatter, blander soup, so colour them evenly without burning.

Swap the peas

The recipe marks peas as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, celery, onion, pepper):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Peasthe original

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