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Puree of Turnip Soup

A creamy soup made from turnips, celery, onion, stock, sugar, cayenne pepper, salt, and cream, served with fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Puree of Turnip Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare and slice the turnips thinly.

  2. Chop the celery and onion.

Make the soup

  1. In a stewpan, combine the turnips, celery, onion, and enough stock to cover.

  2. Boil until the vegetables are tender.

  3. Pass the mixture through a tammy sieve or rub through with wooden spoons.

  4. Season with sugar, cayenne, and salt.

  5. Just before serving, stir in the cream.

Serve

  1. Serve with fried bread.

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. 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. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Turnips
Form the main body of the soup, giving it its flavour and bulk once cooked and puréed.
White celery
Adds a mild, savoury aromatic background to the stock-based soup.
Onion
Adds savoury depth and sweetness as it softens in the stock.
White stock
Serves as the cooking liquid that softens the vegetables and sets the soup's base flavour.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the puréed soup.

The step that matters

Boil until the vegetables are tender. The vegetables must be fully softened so the mixture passes smoothly through a sieve. Under-cooked pieces stay fibrous and leave a grainy texture.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, celery, sugar, pepper, cream, bread. 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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