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Julienne Soup

A vegetable soup made with shredded carrots, turnips, celery, leeks, onions, cabbage, sorrel, herbs, and sugar in clear stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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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 ↓

Julienne Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Thinly shred the carrots, turnips, celery, leeks, and onions into pieces about 1 inch long.

  2. Melt the butter over low heat.

  3. Add the vegetables, salt, and sugar.

  4. Stir lightly until they are lightly colored.

  5. Transfer the mixture to a soup pot.

Simmer and serve

  1. Add enough clear stock for the desired quantity of soup.

  2. Bring to a boil.

  3. Reduce heat.

  4. Skim off any scum and grease that rises to the surface.

  5. Add the shredded cabbage lettuces, sorrel, tarragon, chervil, and 4 lumps of sugar.

  6. Simmer until the vegetables are tender.

  7. Taste for seasoning.

  8. Serve.

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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + cabbagetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Carrots
Provide sweetness, color and body to the soup's vegetable base.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the vegetables soften gently when melted.
Leeks
Contribute a mild onion flavor and aroma to the stock.
Cabbage lettuces
Add tender leafy texture and fresh vegetal flavor when added near the end.

The step that matters

Stir the vegetables lightly until just colored. Gentle cooking in butter softens the vegetables and builds flavor without browning too far. Over-browning turns the sugars bitter and darkens the clear stock, so the soup loses its delicate flavor and clarity.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, celery, leek, butter, sugar, cabbage. 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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