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Cream of Turnip Soup

A soup made from lamb or mutton broth, diced young white turnips, and beaten egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Lamb and turnip work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 276 recipes. Both carry geraniol, which smells rose, geranium. The science ↓

Cream of Turnip Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Bring the broth to a boil.

  2. Add the diced turnips and cook for 30 minutes until very tender.

  3. Rub the cooked turnips through a colander back into the broth.

  4. Return to heat and stir in the beaten egg white and yolk.

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. Lamb + turniptop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together276 recipes

    Shared aroma: geraniol (rose, geranium).

  2. Lamb + eggtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,204 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Turnip + eggtop 36% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,077 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

What each ingredient does

Young white turnips
Provide the main body and flavour, and thicken the broth when rubbed through a colander.
Egg
Enriches the soup and thickens it slightly as it heats, adding richness and body.
Lamb or mutton broth
Forms the liquid base and carries the savoury flavour of the soup.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg. Add the beaten egg to hot soup while stirring, and keep the heat moderate. Egg proteins set when heated, so overheating or boiling can curdle the soup and leave it grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, egg. 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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