Cream of Turnip and Swiss Chard Soup

Evidently, turnips have been used in cooking ever since antiquity. In one of the Babylonian stews, turnip was the principal ingredient in the recipe (see Introduction). In Akkadian, it was called ‘laptu,’ from which the Arabic lift was derived. During medieval times, turnips were made into delicious white stews, sometimes adorned with spicy meatballs. In al-Warraq’s tenth-century cookbook, such dishes were collectively called shaljamiyyat (f