Silken Turnip Soup

Though this potato and turnip soup looks and tastes rich and creamy, it’s surprisingly light: It contains no milk or cream, taking its rich texture from pureed root vegetables, so it makes an excellent starter for an elaborate meal. 

The recipe is by the late Edna Lewis, who codified farm-to-table cooking in the regional Southern vernacular, starting in 1972 with The Edna Lewis Cookbook and finishing in 2003 with The Gift of Southern Cooking, her now-classic collaboration with chef Scott Peacock. Lewis and Peacock first shared the velvety soup in the November 1998 issue of Food & Wine, as part of a 19-recipe Thanksgiving menu.

“That [soup] was pure Miss Lewis,” Peacock told Food & Wine editor in chief Hunter Lewis recently. “When I met her, she was serving that at Gage & Tollner in New York City. I had never seen a treatment of a humble vegetable root like that.” Years later, Peacock put the ivory-colored soup on his menu at Watershed in Atlanta to great fanfare, gently coaxing out the flavor of sweet, earthy turnips and enriching them with good chicken stock rather than cream — just like Lewis did.

Frequently asked questions

Can I make turnip soup ahead of time? 

To showcase the potato and turnip soup’s ivory hue, it’s best served the day you make it. While you can make it ahead, and keep it refrigerated in an airtight container for up to 3 days, the color will darken a shade. (The flavor will not be affected.)  

Notes from the Food & Wine Test Kitchen

“The soup’s texture stood out the most to me,” one tester noted. “It’s perfectly creamy, light, and pourable but not too loose. There’s no gumminess at all — the thin potatoes mostly break up as the soup simmers, which definitely helps. Lightly season the soup with salt, it’s easy to overwhelm the turnips and you won’t be able to taste the nutmeg.”