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Common Turnip Soup

A simple soup of turnips simmered with butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Eliza Acton · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 85,593 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Common Turnip Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turnips

  1. Wash and wipe the turnips, pare and weigh them; allow a pound and a half for every quart of soup.

  2. Cut the turnips into slices about a quarter of an inch thick.

Make the soup

  1. Melt four ounces of butter in a clean stewpan, and put in the turnips before it begins to boil.

  2. Stew the turnips gently for three quarters of an hour, taking care that they shall not brown.

  3. Add the proper quantity of soup (water) to the pan and let it simmer for three quarters of an hour.

  4. Pulp the soup through a coarse sieve or soup strainer.

  5. Put the soup back on the fire, keep it stirred until it has boiled three minutes or four.

  6. Take off the scum, add salt and pepper if required, and serve it very hot.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

108Calories
0 gProtein
12 gFat
2 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 3 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Black Pepper1 tsp ground (2.3g)6
Salt1 tsp (6g)0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Eliza Acton. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Turnips (in the method)
Form the body of the soup, becoming soft and thick when stewed and pulped.
Butter
Fat that gently cooks the turnips in the pan, adding richness to the soup.

The step that matters

Stew the turnips gently without browning. Turnips scorch and turn bitter or brown if cooked too hot. Gentle heat softens them evenly and keeps the soup pale and mild in flavour.

“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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