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9-1 Broth

A thickened turnip soup seasoned with mace, white pepper, and sea salt, served over a soaked roll.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,874 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

9-1 Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Let the broth stand until the next day.

  2. Remove the fat and sediment from the broth.

  3. Warm the broth.

Make the soup

  1. Add the diced turnips and stew until tender.

  2. Season with pounded mace, white pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  3. Mix flour with cream.

  4. Boil the mixture with the soup.

  5. Pour the soup over a roll that has soaked in it.

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 + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. Mace + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,009 recipes
  4. Turnip + white peppertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together275 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  5. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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 as they stew until tender.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the soup.
Flour
Mixed with the cream, it thickens the soup when boiled with it.
Roll
Soaks up the broth, giving the dish a soft, bread-thickened body.

The step that matters

Boil the flour and cream mixture with the soup. Flour thickens only when heated, and it can clump if added directly. Mixing it with cream first and then stirring it into the simmering soup helps it disperse smoothly and thicken evenly.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, mace, cream, flour):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, mace, cream, flour. 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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