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Turnip Soup

A veal and turnip soup made with water, herbs, mace, cream, flour, butter, and white pepper.

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

Why it works: Onion and turnip 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

Make the stock

  1. Stew the knuckle of veal with the onion, sweet herbs, and mace in 6 quarts of water for 5 to 6 hours.

  2. Cover the stew tightly and let it cool.

  3. Before warming, remove the fat and sediment.

Finish the soup

  1. Slice the turnips into small pieces.

  2. Stew the sliced turnips in the gravy until tender.

  3. Add the cream, flour, and butter.

  4. Season with white pepper.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Turnips
Soften into tender pieces that give the soup its body and mild sweetness.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the soup.
Flour
Thickens the liquid so the soup has a fuller body.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a silkier mouthfeel.
Knuckle of veal
Gives the stock its gelatin and savoury meaty flavour.

The step that matters

Stew the sliced turnips in the gravy until tender. Turnips must be fully softened so they break down and blend into the soup; undercooked pieces stay firm and grainy. Adding flour and cream too early or at a hard boil can cause lumps or curdling, so the soup should be kept at a gentle simmer.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, onion, mace, turnip, cream, flour, butter):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, onion, mace, turnip, cream, flour, butter. 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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