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White Turnip Soup

A soup made from sliced white turnips, butter, cream, and veal or mutton broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

White Turnip Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a pot, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the sliced turnips and stew until tender.

  3. Stir in the cream and rub the mixture through a sieve.

  4. Add the broth gradually until the soup reaches the thickness of good cream.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Turnip + vealtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,343 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenol (green, grassy).

  3. Butter + vealtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Turnip + buttertop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,100 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Turnip + creamtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together797 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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 and, once softened and sieved, give it its smooth texture.
Butter
Softens the turnips gently in fat, carrying flavour through the soup.
Cream
Adds richness and body, helping the sieved purée become smooth and velvety.
Veal or mutton broth
Supplies the liquid that thins the purée to a soup with a savoury meaty flavour.

The step that matters

Add the broth gradually. Adding broth in stages lets you control thickness, since the purée can become too thin if the full amount goes in at once. Stop when it reaches the texture of good cream.

Swap the turnip

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cream, veal. 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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