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Puree De Topinambours

A creamy soup made from Jerusalem artichokes, turnip, onion, celery, stock, butter, milk, and lemon, served with fried bread croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Jerusalem artichoke and turnip share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 74 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Puree De Topinambours

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Wash, scrub, and peel the artichokes thinly.

  2. Soak the artichokes in water with a little salt and lemon juice.

  3. Peel the turnip and onion, then slice them.

  4. Wash the celery and chop it small.

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan.

  2. When hot, add the turnip, onion, and celery, and fry gently without burning.

  3. Strain the artichokes and add them to the pan.

  4. Moisten with the stock and cook gently for about an hour until tender.

  5. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve.

  6. Return the puree to a clean stewpan, reheat, and add boiling milk.

  7. Season to taste with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

Serve

  1. Serve with fried bread croutons.

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. Jerusalem artichoke + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together74 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Jerusalem artichoke + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together75 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

Jerusalem artichokes
Form the main body of the soup, giving bulk and a thick, creamy purée when sieved.
White stock
Provides the liquid that cooks the vegetables and forms the soup's base.
Butter
Fat for gently frying the turnip, onion, and celery, carrying flavour through the soup.
Milk
Added at the end to enrich the purée, giving a smoother, softer texture and mellower taste.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth of flavour when fried gently in butter.

The step that matters

Frying the turnip, onion, and celery gently. Browning or burning the vegetables in butter turns their sugars bitter and dark, which would spoil the pale, delicate flavour of the soup. Gentle heat softens them while keeping them sweet.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (jerusalem artichoke, turnip, celery, butter, milk, lemon, bread):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Kalefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against jerusalem artichoke, turnip, celery, butter, milk, lemon, 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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