Skip to main content
Main

Soups and Broths

A creamy soup made with cold bird meat, turnips, egg yolks, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Meat and turnip work together. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 930 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyraldehyde, which smells malty, chocolate. The science ↓

Soups and Broths

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat and turnips

  1. Cut the meat off the breasts of the cold birds and pound it in a mortar.

  2. Boil the legs and bones in broth for 1 hour.

  3. Boil the turnips until soft, then mash and mix with the pounded meat.

Make the soup

  1. Gradually strain in the broth and let it sit by the fire without boiling. Season to taste.

  2. Beat the egg yolks in the cream and strain through a sieve.

  3. Heat the soup and stir in the cream just before it boils, stirring for a few minutes without letting it boil.

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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Meat + turniptop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together930 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  2. Meat + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,432 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Meat + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,248 recipes

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

  4. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Turnip + creamtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together797 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Meat from cold birds
Forms the main body of the soup and gives it a substantial, savoury texture.
Turnips
Mashed, they thicken the soup and add body and a mild sweetness.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the cream, setting into a smooth texture when gently heated.
Cream
Adds richness, fat and a silky mouthfeel to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Stir in the cream just before it boils. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat but scramble and curdle if the soup boils, so the cream must be added and heated only until it thickens.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, egg, cream):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, egg, cream. 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.

You might also like

Meat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesTurnip SoupTurnip Soup43 recipesMeatballsMeatballs37 recipesMince MeatMince Meat37 recipes