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Turnip Souffle

A baked soufflé made with turnip, white sauce, and beaten egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Turnip Souffle

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the base

  1. Make a white sauce by melting the butter, adding the flour, and enough milk to create a thick consistency.

  2. In a bowl, combine the white sauce, strained cooked turnip, chopped onion, salt, and cayenne.

Assemble and bake

  1. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites last.

  2. Pour the mixture into a well-buttered pan.

  3. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) until a delicate brown.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Flour + turniptop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Beaten whites trap air, giving the soufflé its light, risen structure as it sets.
Turnip
Provides the main body and flavour, adding moisture to the thick base.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a white sauce that holds the mixture together.
Butter
Enriches the white sauce and adds richness and flavour to the base.
Milk
Combines with the flour and butter to form the thick white sauce that gives body.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the beaten egg whites last. Beaten egg whites hold trapped air that makes a soufflé rise. Stirring vigorously knocks this air out, so the soufflé bakes flat and dense. Folding gently keeps the foam intact.

Swap the turnip

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, sauce, egg, 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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