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Soup

Turnit and Pea Soup

A simple soup of diced turnips and peas cooked in clarified butter, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and peas are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,350 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Turnit and Pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Sweat the diced turnips in clarified butter until lightly colored.

  2. Add peas and cook until tender.

  3. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

  4. Serve 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 + peastop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,350 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. Peas + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,331 recipes

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

  4. Butter + peastop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,887 recipes

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

  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 soup's bulk and body, becoming soft and sweet as they cook.
Clarified butter
Carries the sweating step and adds rich flavor while turnips take on light color.
Peas
Add sweetness and a tender, green texture to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Sweating the turnips until lightly colored. Cooking the turnips gently in fat draws out their sugars and builds browning flavor. Too little heat leaves them bland, while too much can scorch them and make the soup bitter.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, butter, 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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