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Common Turnip Soup

A simple soup made from sliced turnips simmered in butter and broth, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,252 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Common Turnip Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turnips

  1. Wash and wipe the turnips, then peel and slice them into ¼ inch thick pieces.

  2. Melt the butter in a clean saucepan and add the turnips before the butter starts to boil.

  3. Gently stew the turnips for 45 minutes, ensuring they do not brown.

Make the soup

  1. Prepare the soup and bring it to a boil, then pour it over the turnips.

  2. Let the mixture simmer for another 45 minutes.

  3. Pass the mixture through a coarse sieve or soup strainer.

  4. Return the strained soup to the heat, stirring until it boils for 3 minutes.

  5. Skim off any scum, add salt and pepper to taste, and serve hot.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Turnip + buttertop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,100 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Turnips
Form the body of the soup, becoming soft and tender as they stew and simmer.
Butter
Provides fat for gently cooking the turnips and adds richness to the soup.

The step that matters

Gently stew the turnips without browning. Turnips that brown pick up bitter, caramelized flavours and a darker colour than intended. Keeping the butter below a boil and the heat low lets the turnips soften gently and keeps the soup pale and mild.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper. 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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