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Turnip Soup

A savory soup made with sliced turnips, tomatoes, herbs, and beef broth, finished with grated cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Turnip Soup

Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Turnip Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Fry the sliced turnips in butter until softened.

  2. Stir in the flour and sugar, mixing well.

  3. Add the tomatoes, thyme, parsley, and bay leaf.

  4. Simmer for one hour, then strain through a sieve.

  5. Stir in the hot beef soup and season with pepper, salt, and grated cheese.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,352 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Tomato + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 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
Form the bulk of the soup and, once softened and strained, give it body.
Butter
Softens the turnips in fat and carries flavor through the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it mixes with the butter and liquid.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and moisture that balance the sweet turnips.
Beef soup
Adds savory depth and liquid to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Stir the flour into the butter and turnips. Flour needs to be mixed well so it coats the pieces instead of clumping. Cooking it briefly with the fat lets it thicken evenly once liquid is added.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, butter, flour, sugar, thyme, parsley, beef):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, butter, flour, sugar, thyme, parsley, beef. 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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