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Soup

Turnip and Rice Soup

A soup of diced turnips and rice simmered with butter, water, milk, pepper, salt, and finished with butter and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Turnip and Rice Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, simmer turnips and rice in water with butter until cooked.

  2. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve back into the pot.

  3. Add milk, pepper, and salt; simmer while stirring frequently.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, stir in butter and cream.

  2. Serve with fried sippets or separately boiled rice.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Turnip + ricetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together824 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Turnips
Provide the main body and mild sweetness of the soup once cooked and sieved.
Rice
Thickens the soup as its starch breaks down during simmering, giving body to the purée.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softens the flavour of the soup.
Cream
Adds richness and a silkier texture when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Sieving the cooked mixture. Passing the soft turnip and rice through a fine sieve breaks down remaining fibres and starch lumps, producing a smooth texture. Skipping or rushing this leaves the soup grainy.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, butter, milk, pepper, cream, bread):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, butter, milk, pepper, cream, bread. 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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