Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓
Quick Gravy Soup
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Stick 6 cloves into each onion.
Cut up the turnips and carrots.
Make the soup
Put the onions, turnips, carrots, peppercorns, and salt into 1½ quarts of water.
Boil for 2 hours.
Strain the liquid.
Add 2 teaspoons of Liebig’s extract of meat and thicken slightly if preferred.
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.
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Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together8,002 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together5,873 recipes
Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
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Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together7,585 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Clove + turniptop 6% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together2,233 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together21,601 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
- Onions
- Studded with cloves, they release aromatic flavour into the broth as it simmers.
- Turnips
- Break down during the long simmer, adding body and a mild sweetness to the broth.
- Carrots
- Soften and release natural sugars, adding sweetness and rounding out the broth's flavour.
- Liebig’s extract of meat
- Concentrates savoury, meaty flavour into the broth, deepening its overall taste.
The step that matters
Boil for 2 hours. A long, steady simmer extracts flavour from the vegetables and cloves gradually. Boiling too hard can cloud the broth and break down the vegetables unevenly.
Swap the clove
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, turnip, carrot, meat):
- Celeryfits better
- Parsleyfits better
- Thymefits better
- Clovethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against onion, turnip, carrot, meat. 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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