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Soup

Brown Turnip Soup

A soup made from turnips and onions simmered in boiling water with butter, Odin seasoning, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Brown Turnip Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the turnips thoroughly, peel, and cut them into slices.

  2. Slice the onions.

Make the soup

  1. In a frying pan, heat the butter and fry the turnips and onions until nicely browned.

  2. Remove the fried vegetables and add them to the boiling water along with the Odin and season with salt and pepper.

  3. Boil for 1.5 hours.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + turniptop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,252 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Turnips
Form the body of the soup and give it a mild, earthy flavour.
Onions
Add sweetness and savoury depth when browned in butter.
Butter
Carries the frying heat and helps the vegetables brown for richer flavour.

The step that matters

Frying the turnips and onions until nicely browned. Browning creates savoury, roasted flavours through the Maillard reaction. Pale, steamed vegetables would leave the soup tasting flat and raw-sweet, so they need enough heat and space in the pan.

Swap the turnip

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

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

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

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