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White Soup

A soup made from white vegetables, milk, butter, and cornflour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and artichoke match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 140 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

White Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soup

  1. Cut the vegetables into small pieces.

  2. Boil them in the water with the butter, white pepper, and salt until soft.

  3. Pass the mixture through a colander and return it to the saucepan.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the milk and bring to a boil.

  2. Mix the cornflour with a little water or milk until smooth, then add it to the soup and boil once more.

  3. 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 + artichoketop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together140 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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Potato + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

White vegetables
Form the body of the soup and, once passed through a colander, give it a smooth texture.
Milk
Adds creaminess and a mild sweetness to the soup.
Cornflour
Thickens the soup as it boils, giving it body.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounded flavour to the soup.

The step that matters

Adding the cornflour. Cornflour must be mixed smooth in a little cold liquid before it goes in. Added dry or lumpy, it clumps and does not thicken evenly. Boiling after adding it activates the starch.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, turnip, artichoke, potato, celery, milk, 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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