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Turnip and Rice Soup

A soup made with turnips, rice, onion, peppercorns, water, milk, and butter, garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Turnip and Rice Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a saucepan, combine the turnips, rice, onion, and peppercorns.

  2. Pour in the water and boil for 1 hour.

  3. Rough the mixture through a sieve and return it to the saucepan.

  4. Add the milk, salt, and pepper, stirring until it boils.

Serve

  1. Pour into a warm tureen and sprinkle with chopped parsley.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  5. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Turnips
Provide the main body and mild sweetness, breaking down into the soup as it boils.
Rice
Thickens the soup as its starch softens during the long boil, giving body.
Milk
Adds creaminess and richness, softening the flavor of the vegetables and rice.
Onion
Builds savory depth and aroma as it simmers with the turnips and rice.

The step that matters

Adding the milk. Once milk is added, it should only be heated until it just boils and stirred constantly. Overheating or long boiling can cause it to scorch on the pan base or separate, leaving the soup grainy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, rice, milk, pepper, butter, parsley):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, rice, milk, pepper, butter, parsley. 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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