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Turnip Soup

A simple soup made from turnips, onion, celery, herbs, butter, flour, milk, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Turnip Soup

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 Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Pare the turnips and soak them in cold water for 30 minutes.

  2. Slice the turnips, onion, and celery, and add them to a soup pot with the chopped herbs.

  3. Pour in 2 quarts of cold water and boil until the vegetables are soft.

  4. Rinse the mixture through a sieve, retaining the liquid.

Finish the soup

  1. Season the soup and return it to the heat.

  2. When it boils, stir in the butter and flour mixture and cook for 5 minutes.

  3. Pour the soup into a tureen and add the boiling milk.

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 + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Turnips
Form the body of the soup and give it its mild, earthy flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour through the soup.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softens the flavour when added at the end.
Flour
Thickens the soup slightly when cooked with the butter.

The step that matters

Stirring in the butter and flour mixture. Cooking the butter and flour together before the soup is thickened removes raw starch taste and lets the flour thicken evenly without lumps. The mixture should boil for the full 5 minutes to set properly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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