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Turnip Soup

A soup made from young turnips, butter, milk, and served with fried or toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Turnip Soup

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Turnip Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turnips

  1. Cut young turnips into small pieces.

  2. Boil turnips in water for a few minutes, then strain them.

Make the soup

  1. In a saucepan, melt butter and add turnips, salt, and sugar.

  2. Stew turnips in butter until soft, avoiding browning.

  3. Add enough boiling milk to moisten the turnips.

  4. Rub the mixture through a wire sieve until smooth.

  5. Serve with fried or toasted bread.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Turnip + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together831 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Young turnips
Form the bulk of the soup and, once softened and sieved, give it its body.
Fresh butter
Enriches the soup and carries flavour while the turnips stew gently.
Boiling milk
Moistens the cooked turnips so they blend into a smooth, creamy texture.

The step that matters

Stew turnips in butter until soft, avoiding browning. Gentle stewing softens the starches and fibres so the turnips purée smoothly. Browning adds bitter, toasted notes that would change the soup's delicate flavour.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, milk, bread. 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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