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Turnip Soup

A veal and turnip soup simmered with herbs, mace, and cream, served with a soaked roll.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Turnip Soup

Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Turnip Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Remove all the meat from the knuckle of veal.

  2. Set the remainder of the knuckle to stew with the onion, herbs, mace, and water.

  3. Cover and simmer on low heat for 4 to 5 hours.

  4. Strain the broth and let it cool overnight.

  5. Skim off the fat and sediment.

Finish the soup

  1. Simmer with diced turnips until tender.

  2. Before serving, mix the flour with the cream and add to the soup.

  3. Simmer a small roll in the soup until soaked through and serve.

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.

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

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

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + walnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Veal knuckle
Releases gelatin and savoury flavour into the broth as it stews slowly.
Flour
Mixed with cream, it thickens the soup slightly and gives it body.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the finished soup.
Small roll
Soaks up broth, becoming soft and adding body to the soup.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour with the cream before adding it. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps; whisking it into cream first disperses the starch so it thickens smoothly.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Macethe original

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

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