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Turnip Soup

A soup made with sliced turnips, tomatoes, herbs, and beef broth, finished with cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Turnip Soup

Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Turnip Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Fry the sliced turnips in butter until tender.

  2. Stir in the flour and sugar.

  3. Add the tomatoes, thyme, parsley, and bay leaf.

  4. Simmer for one hour.

  5. Strain the mixture through a sieve.

  6. Add hot beef soup and season with pepper, salt, and grated cheese.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,352 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Tomato + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Turnips
Form the bulk of the soup and, once softened, its body and mild sweetness.
Butter
Fat for frying the turnips, carrying flavor and helping them soften and brown lightly.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks with the butter, giving it a fuller body.
Tomatoes
Add moisture and acidity, balancing the sweetness of the turnips and sugar.
Beef soup
Supplies the liquid and savory meaty flavor that finishes the soup.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour and sugar. Flour stirred into fat and cooked briefly forms a roux that thickens the liquid smoothly; if it is added without cooking, or left in lumps, the soup can turn pasty or grainy.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, butter, flour, sugar, thyme, parsley, beef):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, butter, flour, sugar, thyme, parsley, beef. 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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