Skip to main content
Main

Turnip Soup

A soup made with turnips, butter, broth, salt, sugar, and bread crusts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
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 turnips into round balls, about the size of a nutmeg.

  2. In a stewpan, melt butter and fry turnips until golden.

  3. Remove turnips and dry on a sieve or paper.

Make the soup

  1. Add turnips to the broth and simmer gently for 15 minutes.

  2. Skim the soup and season with salt and sugar.

  3. Cut bread into small pieces, dry them, and add some to the soup.

  4. Serve the rest on a plate.

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. Veal + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,056 recipes

    Shared aroma: cis-3-hexenol (green, grassy).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Turnip + vealtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,343 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenol (green, grassy).

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

What each ingredient does

Turnips
Provide the main vegetable flavor and body of the soup, softened by simmering.
Butter
Fat that fries the turnips until golden, adding browned flavor.
Veal or beef broth
Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries its savory flavor.
Crusts of bread
Dried pieces added to the soup to give it body and a toasted texture.

The step that matters

Frying the turnips until golden. Browning turnips in butter creates flavor through the Maillard reaction, but overcooking can make them bitter and dry, so stop once they are golden.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, veal, sugar, 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.

More turnip soup recipes

Carrot 7 See all 93 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes