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Soup

White Turnip Soup

A creamy soup made from white turnips, butter, cream, and veal or mutton broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

White Turnip Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and slice the turnips.

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, melt the butter and stew the turnips until tender.

  2. Add the cream and rub the mixture through a sieve.

  3. Stir in the broth until the soup reaches the thickness of good 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.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Turnip + vealtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,343 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenol (green, grassy).

  3. Butter + vealtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Turnip + creamtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together797 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

White turnips
Provide the main body and flavour of the soup once stewed and puréed.
Butter
Enriches the stewing turnips and adds richness to the finished soup.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the puréed soup.
Veal or mutton broth
Thins the purée and sets the final body and savoury depth of the soup.

The step that matters

Stir in the broth until the soup reaches the thickness of good cream. Adding broth gradually lets you control thickness, since the purée thins as liquid goes in. Adding it all at once can leave the soup too thin to hold the intended creamy body.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Onionfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cream, veal. 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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