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Brown Artichoke Soup

A soup of browned Jerusalem artichokes, onions, turnip, carrot, and stock, sweetened with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Jerusalem artichoke and turnip share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 74 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Brown Artichoke Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Fry the Jerusalem artichokes in a little butter until brown.

  2. Fry the chopped onions until golden.

Make the soup

  1. In a stewpan, combine the fried artichokes, onions, turnip, carrot, salt, pepper, and stock.

  2. Cook until the vegetables are tender.

  3. Drain the liquid and set it aside to cool, removing all fat.

  4. Pass the vegetables through a fine sieve and add them back to the stock.

  5. Stir in the sugar and allow the soup to boil.

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

  2. It is best to make the soup a day in advance.

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. Jerusalem artichoke + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together74 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Jerusalem artichokes
Browned by frying, they add deep, roasted flavour and body to the soup.
Onions
Frying them to golden adds sweetness and savoury depth to the base.
Turnip
Adds bulk and mild sweetness, and its starch thickens the puréed soup.
Carrot
Contributes natural sweetness and body once cooked and sieved.
Sugar
Rounds out flavour and balances the earthy vegetables.

The step that matters

Fry the artichokes until brown. Browning through the Maillard reaction builds the roasted, savoury flavour that defines this soup. Pale artichokes produce a flat, boiled taste.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (jerusalem artichoke, turnip, carrot, pepper, sugar, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against jerusalem artichoke, turnip, carrot, pepper, sugar, 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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