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Soup a LA Julienne

A vegetable soup with shredded celery, carrots, turnips, leeks, cauliflower, lettuce, onions, and bread pieces, seasoned with sugar, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Soup a LA Julienne

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the vegetables into small shreds.

  2. Toast slices of bread and cut them into pieces the size of coins.

  3. Soak the bread pieces in the remaining broth.

Cook the soup

  1. In a stew-pan, heat a little fine salad oil and gently stew the vegetables over low heat.

  2. Add weak broth as needed while cooking.

  3. Once the vegetables are tender, combine everything and let it simmer for a few minutes.

  4. Season with a lump of white sugar, pepper, and salt to taste.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Turnip + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together526 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Leek + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together217 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Turnip + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together286 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
Adds body, sweetness and colour to the broth as they soften.
Leeks
Contribute a mild onion-like aroma and soft texture when gently stewed.
Bread
Soaked in broth, it thickens the soup and adds body.
Fine salad oil
Carries flavour and helps the vegetables stew gently without sticking.

The step that matters

Gently stew the vegetables over low heat. Cooking shredded vegetables slowly in a little oil softens them and draws out their sweetness without browning. High heat can scorch the fine shreds and make the soup taste bitter, so keep the heat low and the pan covered as needed.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, carrot, turnip, leek, cauliflower, lettuce, bread):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, carrot, turnip, leek, cauliflower, lettuce, bread. 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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