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Turnip and Potato Soup

A savory soup of turnips, potatoes, onions, and bread, simmered in stock and seasoned with bay leaf, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 and Potato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan and fry the sliced onions until browned.

  2. Pour in the stock and add the sliced turnips, potatoes, bread crusts, bay leaf, and celery if using.

  3. Simmer gently until the vegetables are soft.

  4. Strain the soup through a fine sieve and season with pepper and salt.

  5. Bring the soup to a boil.

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

  2. Serve toasted slices on a separate dish.

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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Potato + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,047 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Browning in butter builds a deeper, sweeter flavour base for the soup.
Turnips
Soften during simmering and thicken the soup while adding their own mild sweetness.
Potatoes
Break down as they cook, giving the soup a smooth, body-rich texture.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour and cooks the vegetables.

Swap the celery

The recipe marks celery as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, meat, turnip, potato, bread, pepper):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Garlicfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, meat, turnip, potato, bread, pepper. 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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