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Parsnip Soup

A vegetable soup made with parsnips, onion, celery, stock, milk, butter, lemon juice, flour, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Parsnip Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Slice the vegetables and fry them in the butter or fat without browning for about 15 minutes.

  2. Add the stock and simmer until the parsnips are tender, about 40 minutes.

  3. Rub the mixture through a wire sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Return to the pot, add the milk, salt, and pepper, and bring to a boil.

  2. Mix the flour with a little milk or water, stir it into the soup, and cook for a few minutes.

  3. Add the lemon juice and serve with croutons of fried or toasted bread.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Parsnip + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together561 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Parsnips
Their starch and sugars thicken the soup and give it a sweet, earthy body when puréed.
Butter or good fat
Carries the flavour of the softened vegetables and gives the soup a rich mouthfeel.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the vegetable flavour and softens the vegetables as it simmers.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mild sweetness, softening the soup's flavour and texture.
Flour
Thickens the soup slightly when stirred in and cooked for a few minutes.
Lemon juice or vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness of the parsnips.

The step that matters

Fry the vegetables without browning. Gentle frying softens the vegetables and builds flavour without browning. Browning would add bitter, roasted notes that clash with the delicate, sweet flavour of the parsnips.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, parsnip, celery, butter, lemon, flour, pepper):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, parsnip, celery, butter, lemon, flour, 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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