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Spring Soup and Soup a LA Julienne

A vegetable soup made with turnips, carrots, celery, leeks, lettuce, sorrel, asparagus, beans, peas, butter, and dried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and sorrel match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 317 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Spring Soup and Soup a LA Julienne

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a large pot, combine the broth, turnips, carrots, celery, and leeks or onions.

  2. Simmer for 20-30 minutes until the vegetables are tender.

  3. Add the lettuce and sorrel, and continue boiling until tender.

  4. Stir in the asparagus points and French beans or green peas just before serving.

Make the julienne version

  1. For Julienne soup, first sauté the carrots and other vegetables in butter until tender.

  2. Pour the boiling stock over the sautéed vegetables, skim off the fat, and finish as above.

  3. Optionally, add chervil, spinach, green onions, or small tufts of broccoli or cauliflower.

Serve

  1. Serve with small rounds of dried bread.

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. Lettuce + sorreltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together317 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Leek + sorreltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together112 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + sorreltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together179 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Sautés the vegetables, adding richness and flavour to the soup.
Carrots
Add sweetness and colour, and hold their shape when cut into julienne strips.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and body to the broth as they become tender.
Lettuce
Softens as it simmers, adding gentle body and a mild vegetable flavour.

The step that matters

Skimming the fat after pouring the stock. Fat from the sautéed butter and vegetables floats on the hot broth and can make the soup greasy. Skimming it off keeps the broth clear and light.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, turnip, carrot, leek, lettuce, sorrel, asparagus):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Celerythe original
  4. Parsleyfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, turnip, carrot, leek, lettuce, sorrel, asparagus. 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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