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White Soup

A vegetable soup made with onion, turnip, potatoes, celery, parsnip or artichoke, water, milk, flour, butter, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and parsnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 590 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

White Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Wash and peel the vegetables, then cut them into pieces.

  2. In a pot, simmer the vegetables in water with salt and butter until soft.

Finish the soup

  1. Rub the mixture through a sieve or colander back into the pot.

  2. Add the milk and heat the mixture.

  3. Mix the flour with a little cold water or milk. Add the mixture to the soup.

  4. Let the soup simmer for about 10 minutes.

  5. Serve with diced fried 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. Turnip + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together590 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + parsniptop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together561 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Starch that breaks down into the soup, giving it body and a smooth texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the soup's flavour and mouthfeel.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softness to the soup's colour and texture.
Flour or cornflour
Thickens the liquid as it heats, giving the soup a fuller body.

The step that matters

Adding the flour mixture. Flour must be mixed smoothly into cold liquid before it goes into the hot soup; otherwise it clumps. Starch thickens properly only when it is well dispersed and the soup is kept simmering.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, potato, celery, parsnip, milk, flour, 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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