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Common Turnip Soup

A soup made by stewing turnips in butter and simmering with boiling soup, then puréed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 25% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,100 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Common Turnip Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turnips

  1. Wash, wipe and peel the turnips, then weigh them.

  2. Cut the turnips into slices about ¼ inch thick.

Cook

  1. Melt the butter in a clean saucepan over low heat, then add the turnips to the melted butter.

  2. Stew gently for 45 minutes without browning.

  3. Pour the boiling soup over the turnips and let them simmer for another 45 minutes.

  4. Pulp the mixture through a sieve or food mill.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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, breaking down into a thick, smooth pulp when cooked.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor and giving a silky mouthfeel to the soup.

The step that matters

Stew the turnips without browning. Gentle heat softens the turnips and draws out their flavor while keeping the butter from browning. Browning would add bitter, toasted notes that change the soup's clean, mild taste.

“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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