Name: Turnip Soup
Ingredients: 2 heads of celery; 1 quart white veal or mutton broth; 2 French rolls, crumbled; salt to taste; sugar to taste; 1 pint hot cream; croutons of fried bread

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Turnip Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Remove the white part from the celery and stew it for 1 hour.
Add the broth and crumbled rolls, and stew until soft enough to pass through a fine sieve.
Return the mixture to the pot, bring to a boil, and skim off any foam.
Season with salt and sugar to taste.
Pour hot cream into the serving bowl and add croutons before serving.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Celery + breadtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,110 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Veal + breadtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,056 recipes

Shared aroma: cis-3-hexenol (green, grassy).
Celery + creamtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,863 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).
Celery + vealtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,336 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).