Why it works: Turnip and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,585 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓
Vegetable Soup
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
In a pot, combine the turnips, onions, and beef.
Add enough water to cover the ingredients.
Season with salt and pepper to taste.
Simmer
Bring to a boil, then simmer until the vegetables are tender and the beef is cooked through.
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.
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Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together7,585 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together17,092 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together18,971 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Turnip + peppertop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together5,252 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together68,474 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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 turn tender as they simmer.
- Onions
- Add sweetness and aroma as they soften in the broth.
- Beef
- Adds rich, meaty flavor and becomes tender through long, gentle cooking.
The step that matters
Simmering the beef. Coarse beef is tough and needs a long, gentle simmer for its connective tissue to break down. Boiling hard or cutting the simmer short leaves the meat chewy, so keep the pot at a gentle simmer until the beef is cooked through.
Swap the turnip
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, pepper, beef):
- Potatofits better
- Carrotfits better
- Capsicumfits better
- Turnipthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against onion, pepper, 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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