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Turnip Soup

A creamy soup of sliced turnips simmered in stock and milk, thickened with butter and flour, seasoned with nutmeg, salt, pepper, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Turnip Soup

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Turnip Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turnips

  1. Peel the turnips and cut them into thin slices.

  2. Melt the butter in a saucepan and add the turnips.

  3. Cook gently for 15 to 20 minutes.

Make the soup

  1. Add the stock and simmer for 40 minutes, or until the turnips are tender.

  2. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve and return it to the saucepan.

  3. Add the milk and bring to a boil.

  4. Mix the flour smoothly with a little stock or milk, pour it into the soup, and stir.

  5. Cook for 5 to 6 minutes.

Season and serve

  1. Add a pinch of sugar, nutmeg, salt, and pepper to taste.

  2. Serve.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Turnip + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together377 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Turnips
Form the body of the soup, becoming soft and smooth when cooked and sieved.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour when the turnips are first cooked gently.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks, giving it a fuller body.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mellows the flavour of the soup.
White stock or water
Provides the cooking liquid that softens the turnips and forms the soup base.

The step that matters

Mix the flour smoothly with a little stock or milk. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps instantly. Mixing it first into a smooth paste with a little cool liquid lets the starch disperse evenly so the soup thickens without lumps.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, flour, nutmeg, pepper, sugar):

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, flour, nutmeg, pepper, sugar. 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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