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Soup

Vegetable Puree Soup

A creamy soup made from simmered turnips and other vegetables, thickened with flour and milk or stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Vegetable Puree Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a pot until tender.

  2. Add the turnips and other vegetables, and simmer for 12 to 15 minutes.

  3. Continue to simmer for about 1.5 hours until all vegetables are tender.

Finish and thicken

  1. Rub the mixture through a sieve and reheat.

  2. Mix the flour with a little cold milk, water, or stock until smooth.

  3. Add this mixture to the soup and cook for an additional 5 minutes.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + turniptop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,100 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Turnips
Provide the main bulk and starchy body that becomes smooth when puréed.
Other vegetables
Add flavor and additional body to the purée.
Flour
Its starch thickens the soup when heated with liquid.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour smooth before adding it. Flour added dry or unmixed forms lumps that do not disperse well. Whisking it into cold liquid first lets the starch separate evenly, and simmering it for a few minutes lets the starch swell and thicken the soup.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk. 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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