Skip to main content
Main

Turnip 'soup

A simple soup made with butter, turnips, onions, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Turnip and onion 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

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

  2. Wash, drain, and slice the turnips and onions very thin.

  3. Add the turnips and onions to the butter with ½ cup of stock and stew gently for 1 hour.

  4. Add the remaining stock and simmer for another hour.

  5. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve.

  6. Return it to the stewpan. Heat without boiling.

  7. Serve very hot.

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 + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + turniptop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,100 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 flavour of the soup as they soften during slow stewing.
Onions
Break down during stewing to add sweetness and depth to the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the vegetables soften and carry flavour.
Stock
Provides the liquid that cooks the vegetables and forms the soup base.

The step that matters

Heat without boiling. Boiling a puréed soup can cause it to separate and turn grainy, and can scorch dairy or fat, so it should be heated gently just until hot.

Swap the turnip

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion. 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