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Turnip Soup

A soup made with butter, turnips, onions, and stock, simmered and sieved.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Turnip Soup

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 ↓

Turnip Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan without boiling it.

  2. Wash, drain, and slice the turnips and onions very thin.

  3. Add the turnips and onions to the butter with 1 cup of stock.

  4. Stew gently for 1 hour.

  5. Add the remaining stock.

  6. Simmer for another hour.

Finish and serve

  1. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve.

  2. Return the strained mixture to the stewpan without boiling.

  3. 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.

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. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + turniptop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,100 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 body of the soup and, once strained, give it a smooth, thick texture.
Onions
Add sweetness and savory depth as they soften in the butter and stock.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor, and gently cooks the vegetables without browning.
Stock
Provides the liquid that cooks the vegetables and forms the base of the soup.

The step that matters

Return the strained mixture to the stewpan without boiling.. Boiling a pureed soup can scorch the bottom and make the texture thin or grainy, and it can cause a skin to form, so reheat it gently.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion. 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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