Name: Julienne Soup
Ingredients: ½ pound mixed vegetables (carrots, turnips, onions, celery, leeks); 2 tablespoons butter; 1 teaspoon sugar; 2 quarts clear soup; optional: sorrel, celery, cabbage, lettuce, peas

Why it works: Leek and sorrel match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 112 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Julienne Soup

Ingredients

½ pound mixed vegetables (carrots, turnips, onions, celery, leeks)
2 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon sugar
2 quarts clear soup
optional: sorrel, celery, cabbage, lettuce, peas

Directions

Prepare

Cut the vegetables into small fillets.
Wash and dry the vegetables, then sauté them in butter and sugar.

Make the soup

Add 2 quarts of clear soup to the sautéed vegetables.
If available, add a little sorrel, celery, cabbage, lettuce, and peas.
Simmer until heated through and 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.

Leek + sorreltop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together112 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,046 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Turnip + sorreltop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together179 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,173 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 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

Mixed vegetables: Provide the main body, flavor and texture of the soup.
Butter: Fat that softens the vegetables and carries flavor as they sauté.
Sugar: Adds a little sweetness and helps the vegetables brown lightly in the butter.
Clear soup: Forms the liquid base that carries the vegetables.

The step that matters

Sautéing the vegetables in butter and sugar. Cooking the vegetables gently in butter and sugar draws out their sweetness and softens them before the liquid is added. Washing and drying them first matters because surface water would dilute the butter and steam the vegetables instead of letting them sauté.

Swap the celery

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

Capersfits better
Parsleyfits about as well
Thymefits about as well
Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, onion, leek, butter, sugar, sorrel. 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.