Skip to main content
Main

Winter Teas Soup

A creamy soup of diced turnips, flour, butter, and cream, served with a small roll.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Turnip and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,874 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Winter Teas Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Cook the diced turnips in water until tender, seasoning with salt and pepper.

  2. In a bowl, mix the flour with the cream until smooth. Add the butter to the cream mixture.

  3. Let the small roll simmer in the soup until soaked through.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the soup and ensure it is as thick as medium cream 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.

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 + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Turnip + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,252 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together139 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Turnips
Form the main body of the soup and give it its flavour as they cook tender.
Flour
Thickens the cream mixture so the soup becomes smooth and creamy.
Cream
Adds richness and body, carrying the soup's smooth, silky texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the cream mixture for a rounder flavour.
Small roll
Soaks up soup to add body and soften, thickening the broth.

The step that matters

Strain the soup and check its thickness. Flour and starch thicken as the soup cooks and cools, so judging thickness at the end matters. Too thin means a watery soup; too thick means it has gone pasty. Adjust gently before serving.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, cream, flour, walnut, butter):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, cream, flour, walnut, 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.

More turnip soup recipes

Carrot 7 See all 93 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes