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Miss Lottie Dubach's Turnip Soup

A soup made from sliced turnips, water, flour, milk, butter, and optional codfish, thickened with crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Miss Lottie Dubach's Turnip Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the turnips into small narrow strips.

  2. Place the turnips in a pot with 2 quarts of cold water and boil until tender.

Make the soup

  1. Stir in 2 teaspoons of flour mixed with ¼ cup of milk and the butter.

  2. Add 1 pint of milk and salt to taste, and bring to a boil.

  3. Just before serving, stir in 1 cup of crushed crackers.

  4. For added flavor, mix in ½ cup of picked codfish if desired.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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
Provide the main body and mild, sweet-bitter flavor of the soup.
Flour
Thickens the broth into a smooth, creamy body when heated with liquid.
Milk
Adds creaminess and richness, softening the flavor of the broth.
Butter
Adds fat for richer flavor and a smoother mouthfeel.
Crushed crackers
Add body and absorb liquid, giving the soup a thicker, heartier texture.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour and milk mixture. Flour must be mixed smoothly with cold milk before it goes into the hot liquid. Added directly, it clumps, and unless the soup is brought to a boil and stirred, the starch will not fully thicken it evenly.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, egg, 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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