Skip to main content
Main

Potage Aux Navets, or Turnip Soup

A French turnip soup made with clarified butter, celery, sugar, salt, and consommé.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Turnip and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,418 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Potage Aux Navets, or Turnip Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turnips

  1. Cut the turnips into 1-inch squares and shape them like barrels.

  2. Soak the turnips in water.

  3. Drain the turnips.

Fry the turnips

  1. Clarify the butter in a shallow stewpan over heat.

  2. Fry the turnips in the clarified butter until golden brown.

  3. Transfer the turnips to a sieve to drain excess butter.

Make the soup

  1. Place the turnips in a soup pot with a little sugar and salt.

  2. Fill the pot with consommé.

  3. Add a few round, blanched heads of celery at the beginning for extra flavor.

  4. Set the pot on the stove to boil gently.

  5. Skim the soup well.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Butter + celerytop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,049 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Turnip + buttertop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,100 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Turnip + sugartop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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, turning golden and tender when fried and simmered.
Butter
Frying fat that browns the turnips and adds richness; clarifying removes milk solids that would burn.
Consommé
Forms the liquid base of the soup, carrying the flavor of the dish.
Celery
Adds aromatic flavor to the broth as it simmers.

The step that matters

Fry the turnips until golden brown. Clarified butter lets the turnips brown at a high heat without burning, and browning adds deep flavor. Excess butter must be drained off so the soup is not greasy.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, butter, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, butter, 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.

More turnip soup recipes

Carrot 7 See all 93 →

You might also like

Cream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipesCelery CroquettesCelery Croquettes16 recipesCelery Cream SoupCelery Cream Soup15 recipes