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Puree Op Turnip Soup

A smooth soup made from turnips, celery, onion, stock, sugar, cayenne, salt, and cream, served with fried bread.

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

Puree Op Turnip Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare and slice the turnips thinly.

  2. Chop the celery and onion.

  3. In a stewpan, combine the turnips, celery, onion, and enough stock to cover.

Cook and strain

  1. Boil until the vegetables are tender.

  2. Pass the mixture through a tammy sieve or rub it with wooden spoons.

Finish and serve

  1. Season with sugar, cayenne, and salt.

  2. Just before serving, stir in the cream.

  3. Serve with 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 + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Onion + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Turnips
Form the bulk of the soup and give its main flavour and body once puréed.
Celery
Adds aromatic savoury depth as it softens in the stock.
Onion
Contributes savoury aroma and sweetness as it cooks down in the stock.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Boil until the vegetables are tender. The vegetables must be fully soft so the purée strains smoothly and has no grainy texture. Undercooked turnip stays firm and resists sieving, leaving the soup coarse.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, celery, sugar, cream, bread. 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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