Julienne Soup
Julienne soup is consommé to which have been added one carrot, two onions, two white turnips, and one stalk of celery cut into shreds about as thick as a match. The vegetables should be boiled in clear water before adding to soup.
A garnish recipe rather than a soup recipe: it assumes you already have good consommé on hand and only tells you what to put in it. The knife work is the whole dish.
- The cut is the pointJulienne means matchstick strips, and the original defines the size only by comparison: shreds "about as thick as a match." Uniformity matters more than speed, since the strips are meant to be visible and to cook at the same rate.
- Blanch separately, not togetherBoiling the vegetables in clear water first keeps starch, turnip sulphur and carrot colour out of the consommé, which must stay transparent. Cook each vegetable to just tender in its own water — turnip and celery go quicker than carrot — then drain well.
- Refresh in cold waterDropping the blanched strips into cold water stops the cooking and keeps them firm and distinct. Reheat them in the consommé for a minute at serving time, no longer, or they slump.
- Quantities and yieldThe book gives no quantity of consommé and no yield, so the proportion of garnish to broth is left to the cook. Scale the vegetables, not the broth, if you want a heartier bowl.
- The onionsTwo onions cut in matchsticks is a great deal of onion by modern taste and will read sweet. Small yellow onions, or a single medium one, sit better with the rest; leek is a common substitute and behaves the same way.
- White turnipsThese are the small purple-topped or all-white turnips, not swede or rutabaga. Peel generously — the outer layer is fibrous and stays tough even after blanching.
- The consommé itselfThe entry names no stock, only "consommé," i.e. a clarified, well-seasoned broth. A good commercial stock will work, but reduce and season it before the garnish goes in, since the vegetables add almost nothing to the flavour of the liquid.
Julienne is one of the oldest surviving garnish names in French cookery, appearing in eighteenth-century French kitchen writing and firmly fixed by the nineteenth century as shorthand for vegetables cut in thin strips; the origin of the word is usually traced to a cook's given name, though no particular Julien has ever been documented. By the time the Butterick Publishing Company issued its cook book, consommé with a julienne garnish was a standard opening course for a formal American dinner — clear, light, and above all a display of skill, since a cloudy broth or ragged vegetables gave the kitchen away at once.