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Soup

Potage De Navets Aux Petits Pois

A soup of diced turnips simmered in consommé with blanched peas and served with croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and peas are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and 1,350 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Potage De Navets Aux Petits Pois

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dice the turnips into small cubes.

Cook the turnips

  1. Sauté the turnips in clarified butter, stirring constantly until they are golden.

  2. Drain the turnips in a colander.

  3. Simmer the turnips in the prepared consommé.

  4. Add a pinch of sugar and degrease the soup.

Serve

  1. Once the turnips are cooked, add them to a serving bowl with the blanched peas.

  2. Serve with croutons.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Turnip + peastop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,350 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Butter + peastop 16% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together4,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Turnip + buttertop 25% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together4,100 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Turnip + sugartop 29% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Turnips
Provide the bulk and body of the soup, softening as they simmer in the consommé.
Clarified butter
Conducts heat well and browns the turnips to a golden color, adding a toasted flavor.
Prepared consommé
Serves as the clear savory liquid that cooks the turnips and forms the soup base.
Green peas
Add color, body and a fresh sweetness to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Sautéing the turnips until golden. Browning relies on the Maillard reaction between sugars and proteins, which needs steady heat and constant stirring. Turnips left too long over high heat scorch, turning bitter and spoiling the soup's flavor.

Flavor stand-ins for the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, peas):

  1. Asparagusbetter flavor fit
  2. Leekbetter flavor fit
  3. Sweet potatobetter flavor fit
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, peas. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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