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Turnip Soup

A soup made with turnips, onion, bread, stock, and cream or milk, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Turnip Soup

Why it works: Turnip and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,585 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Turnip Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and cut up the turnips.

  2. Peel and slice the onion.

Make the soup

  1. Add the turnips and onion to the stock.

  2. Add the bread to the mixture.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

  4. Simmer until tender.

  5. Pass the mixture through a wire sieve.

  6. Return the mixture to the pan.

Finish and serve

  1. Add cream or milk.

  2. Reheat.

  3. Serve with croutons.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Bread + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 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 flavour of the soup once simmered and puréed.
White stock
Forms the liquid base that carries and cooks the vegetables.
Bread
Thickens the soup slightly, adding body as it breaks down during simmering.
Cream or milk
Adds richness and a smoother, creamier texture to the finished soup.
Onion
Adds savoury aromatic depth to the stock and turnips.

The step that matters

Simmer until tender. The turnips and bread must be fully softened so the mixture passes smoothly through the sieve. Undercooked pieces will leave a grainy, fibrous texture in the finished soup.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, cream, pepper, onion):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, cream, pepper, onion. 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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