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White Soup

A vegetable soup made with onion, turnip, potatoes, celery, parsnip or artichoke, simmered in water, milk, and thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and parsnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 590 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

White Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Wash and peel the vegetables, then cut them into pieces.

Make the soup

  1. Simmer the vegetables in water with salt and butter until soft.

  2. Rub the mixture through a sieve or colander back into the saucepan.

  3. Add the milk and heat gently.

  4. Mix the flour with a little cold water or milk, then add to the soup.

  5. Let the soup simmer for about 10 minutes and serve with diced 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 + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together590 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. Celery + parsniptop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together561 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  5. Onion + turniptop 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

Potatoes
Starch that breaks down during simmering, thickening the soup and giving it body.
Flour or cornflour
Starch that thickens the soup when mixed smoothly with cold liquid before adding.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mild sweetness, lightening the colour of the soup.

The step that matters

Adding the flour mixture. Flour added directly to hot liquid forms lumps, so it should be mixed with a little cold water or milk first. Starch then thickens the soup evenly as it simmers.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, potato, celery, parsnip, milk, flour, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, potato, celery, parsnip, milk, flour, butter. 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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