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Soup

Quaker Oat Soup

A soup made with Quaker oats, onions, turnips, boiled in water, then strained, mixed with milk, and seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and turnip 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 ↓

Quaker Oat Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Put the oats into the boiling water along with the onions and turnips.

  2. Boil until tender, then strain and rub through a sieve.

  3. Add the milk, season with salt and pepper, and reheat.

  4. 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. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Oats + turniptop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together151 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Oats + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,119 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Quaker oats
Thickens the soup as the starch swells and softens during boiling, giving body.
Spanish onions
Add sweetness and savory flavor as they soften into the broth.
Turnips
Contribute mild, slightly sweet flavor and help give the soup body when rubbed through a sieve.
New milk
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Rub through a sieve after boiling until tender. Boiling softens the oats, onions and turnips so they break down easily. Straining and rubbing them through a sieve removes lumps and fibers, producing the smooth, even texture the soup depends on.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oats, turnip, milk, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against oats, turnip, milk, pepper. 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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