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Soup a LA Piemontaise

A turnip and tomato soup with anchovies, garlic, butter, potato quenelles, chervil, tarragon, and grated Parmesan.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription

This recipe’s ingredient list has no crust or pastry, so it bakes more like a fruit dish than a pastry pie.

From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Chervil and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 795 recipes mention both. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk, fish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Prepare a brown puree of turnips.

  2. Mix in the tomatoes.

  3. Combine the anchovies, garlic, and butter and pass the mixture through a fine sieve.

Serve

  1. In a tureen, add the potato quenelles and the parboiled chervil and tarragon.

  2. Pour the soup into the tureen and serve with grated Parmesan cheese on the side.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Chervil + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together795 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Tomato + garlictop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together14,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Tomato + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,797 recipes

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

  4. Garlic + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4,512 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Turnip + cherviltop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together184 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
Form the body of the brown puree that gives the soup its base.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and a fresher, brighter flavor to the savory base.
Anchovies
Add deep savory, umami flavor that melts into the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Potato quenelles
Provide soft, starchy dumplings that add body and texture to the soup.

Flavor stand-ins for the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, garlic, butter, potato, chervil, tarragon, parmesan cheese):

  1. Chivebetter flavor fit
  2. Asparagusbetter flavor fit
  3. Lettucebetter flavor fit
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, garlic, butter, potato, chervil, tarragon, parmesan cheese. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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