Skip to main content
Main

White Soup

A soup made from white vegetables, butter, milk, and cornflour, served with diced fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Turnip and artichoke match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 140 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

White Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soup

  1. Cut the vegetables into small pieces.

  2. Boil the vegetables in water with butter, white pepper, and salt until soft.

  3. Rub the mixture through a colander back into the saucepan.

  4. Add the milk and bring the soup to a boil.

Thicken and serve

  1. Mix the cornflour with a little water or milk until smooth.

  2. Add the cornflour mixture to the soup and boil once more.

  3. Serve with diced fried bread.

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 + artichoketop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together140 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Potato + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Break down when boiled, giving the soup body and a smooth, thick texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, rounding out the flavour of the soup.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softens the flavour of the vegetable base.
Cornflour
Starch that thickens the soup as it boils, giving it a silkier body.

The step that matters

Adding the cornflour mixture. Cornflour must be fully smooth in cold liquid before it goes in, otherwise it clumps. The soup must then boil so the starch swells and thickens evenly.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, turnip, artichoke, potato, celery, butter, milk):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, turnip, artichoke, potato, celery, butter, milk. 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.

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesArtichoke SoupArtichoke Soup55 recipes