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White Soup

A creamy soup of turnips, leeks, celery, ham, stock, milk, and bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

White Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a saucepan, combine turnips, leeks, celery, butter, and ham.

  2. Add stock and simmer until tender.

  3. Near the end of cooking, stir in milk and bread pieces. Bring to a boil 2 or 3 times.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the soup.

  2. Serve hot.

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 + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 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. Leek + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  5. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Turnips
Form the body of the soup and give it a soft, thick texture as they cook.
Leeks
Add mild onion-like sweetness and aroma to the base.
Celery
Adds savory, aromatic flavor to the stock base.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor from the vegetables and ham.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mild sweetness, giving the soup its white color.
Bread pieces
Thicken the soup slightly as they soften and absorb liquid.

The step that matters

Adding the milk near the end of cooking. Milk can curdle or scorch if it is boiled hard or held at high heat for long. Adding it late and only bringing the soup to a gentle boil keeps the milk smooth and prevents it from separating or sticking to the pan.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, leek, butter, ham, milk, bread):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, leek, butter, ham, milk, 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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