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Julienne Soup

A hearty vegetable soup made with beef stock, carrots, turnip, cabbage, corn, celery, tomatoes, and optional herbs and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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

Make the stock

  1. Boil the beef shank in 1 ½ gallons of water for 6 hours, skimming carefully to make a good stock.

  2. If the water boils too low, add more hot water.

  3. Set the stock aside until the next morning, then remove all grease and the shank.

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Boil the cabbage separately, changing the water once.

  2. Boil the remaining carrot whole until done.

Make the soup

  1. Heat the stock an hour before serving.

  2. Add chopped carrots, turnip, corn, celery (or celery seed), and tomatoes to the heated stock.

  3. When the vegetables are cooked, add them to the soup with their boiling water, draining the cabbage well.

  4. Boil the soup for an hour.

  5. Strain the soup through a colander, shaking gently to avoid cloudiness.

  6. Dice the remaining carrot and add it to the soup just before serving.

  7. Season with salt, pepper, optional sweet herbs, and add sherry if desired.

  8. Serve very hot.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Celery + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef shank
Long simmering releases flavour and gelatin into the water, forming the body of the stock.
Carrots
Add sweetness and colour, and hold their shape in the soup as a vegetable element.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and a rounded, savoury flavour to the broth.
Green corn
Adds sweetness and body to the soup as a vegetable element.

The step that matters

Skimming the stock while it simmers. Skimming removes foam and impurities that rise as the shank cooks. Removing them early keeps the stock clear and clean-tasting rather than cloudy or greasy.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, turnip, corn, celery, tomato, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, corn, celery, tomato, 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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