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Turnip Soup

A hearty veal and turnip soup thickened with flour, cream, and butter, served with a small roll.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Turnip Soup

Why it works: Onion and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,585 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Turnip Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Remove all the meat from the knuckle of veal for cutlets.

  2. Set the remainder of the knuckle to stew with the onion, herbs, mace, and water.

  3. Cover and simmer on low heat for 4 to 5 hours.

  4. Strain the broth and refrigerate overnight.

  5. Remove the fat and sediment from the broth.

Finish and serve

  1. Simmer the broth with diced turnips until tender, seasoning with salt and pepper.

  2. Mix the flour with the cream and butter until smooth.

  3. Add the mixture to the soup and let a small roll simmer in the soup until soaked through.

  4. Serve the soup thickened to the consistency of medium cream.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Turnip + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,252 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together139 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal knuckle
Releases gelatin and flavour into the broth as it stews, giving body and savour.
Turnips
Provide the main vegetable flavour and soften to give the soup its body.
Cream
Adds richness and smoothness, softening the soup's flavour and texture.
Flour
Thickens the soup by starch absorbing liquid when heated with fat and cream.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the flour blend smoothly into the cream.
Small roll
Soaks up broth, adding bread body and thickening the soup further.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour with cream and butter until smooth. Flour added directly to hot liquid forms lumps because its starch clumps before it can disperse. Blending it first with fat and cold cream lets the starch separate evenly, so the soup thickens smoothly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, onion, turnip, pepper, flour, cream, walnut):

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, onion, turnip, pepper, flour, cream, walnut. 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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