Skip to main content
Main

Turnips

A thickened turnip soup made with butter, flour, broth, salt, pepper, optional sugar or egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Turnips

Why it works: Turnip and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,874 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Turnips

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean, scrape, and wash the turnips well.

  2. Boil the turnips in water for 10 minutes, then drain.

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan over medium heat.

  2. Sprinkle in the flour and stir.

  3. Add the turnips, broth, salt and pepper; simmer until cooked.

  4. For a sweeter version, use sugar instead of flour.

Finish

  1. Optionally, mix in the beaten egg yolks just before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Turnip + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,252 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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 bulk and body of the soup once simmered until tender.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the soup by absorbing fat and liquid as it is stirred into the butter.
Broth
Supplies the cooking liquid and savoury flavour for the soup.
Sugar
Adds sweetness in the sweeter version, used in place of flour.
Beaten egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the soup slightly when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Mix in the beaten egg yolks just before serving. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat and can curdle or scramble if the soup boils after they are added. Stir them in off the heat or over very low heat for a smooth, velvety result.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, sugar, 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.

More turnip soup recipes

Carrot 7 See all 93 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes