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Turnip

A creamy turnip soup with onions, celery, herbs, butter, cream, milk, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,418 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Turnip

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel, wash, and slice the vegetables.

Cook the vegetables

  1. In a pot, gently fry the vegetables in butter with sugar and salt for 20 minutes without browning.

  2. Add the stock or water and simmer until the vegetables are tender; remove the herbs.

Finish the soup

  1. Mix the flour with a little milk.

  2. Stir the mixture into the milk and cream in a saucepan over heat until it boils and thickens.

  3. Simmer until needed.

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. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Celery + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,331 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together377 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Turnips
Form the bulk of the soup and give it its mild, earthy flavor.
Onions
Build an aromatic, sweet base when gently softened in butter.
Butter
Fat that carries flavor and enriches the soup's texture.
Celery
Adds savory, aromatic depth to the vegetable base.
Milk
Liquid that thickens with the flour to give the soup a creamy body.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Fry the vegetables gently without browning. Gentle frying softens the vegetables and draws out their sweetness while keeping the color pale. Browning would add roasted, bitter notes and a darker color that do not suit a delicate white soup.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, onion, celery, sugar, nutmeg, butter, cream):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, onion, celery, sugar, nutmeg, butter, 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.

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