Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓
Mixed Vegetable Soup
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Wash and scrape the carrot, and peel the turnip.
Cut the vegetables into quarter-inch dice.
Cook
Put them into boiling salted water and cook until tender.
Drain the vegetables and add them, along with the salt, to the boiling stock.
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.
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Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together8,002 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
- Stock
- Provides the liquid base and savory flavor of the soup.
- Turnip
- Adds body, texture and a mild earthy flavor.
- Carrot
- Adds natural sweetness, color and tender texture to the soup.
The step that matters
Cut the vegetables into even quarter-inch dice. Pieces of uniform size cook at the same rate, so none turns mushy while others stay firm. Even cutting gives the vegetables a consistent texture in the finished soup.
“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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