Skip to main content
Main

Artichoke Soup

A soup made from chopped artichokes, turnip, onion, stock, thickened with flour, finished with cream or milk, served with toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Artichoke Soup

Why it works: Artichoke and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 140 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Artichoke Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Chop the artichokes, turnip, and onion finely.

  2. Boil them together in a pint of stock.

  3. Rub the mixture through a sieve.

  4. Return the mixture to the saucepan and bring it to a boil.

  5. Thicken with flour, adding salt and pepper to taste.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, stir in the cream or milk.

  2. Serve with slices of toast.

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. Artichoke + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together140 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. Artichoke + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together466 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Turnip + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,252 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

Artichokes
Provide the main flavour and body of the soup once cooked and sieved.
Turnip
Adds bulk and a mild sweetness that rounds out the soup.
Onion
Builds savoury depth as it softens into the stock.
Flour
Thickens the liquid so the soup becomes smooth and full-bodied.
Cream or milk
Adds richness and a creamy texture, stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Stir in the cream or milk just before serving. Dairy added to a boiling soup can curdle or separate because of heat and acidity. Adding it off the heat, just before serving, keeps the soup smooth and creamy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (artichoke, turnip, flour, pepper, cream):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Kalefits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against artichoke, turnip, flour, pepper, 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.

More artichoke soup recipes

Jerusalem 55Brown 3 See all 70 →

You might also like

Turnip SoupTurnip Soup43 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes