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Turnip Purée

A creamy turnip purée made with corned beef liquor, butter, flour, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Turnip Purée

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liquor

  1. Dip out 1 quart of the corned beef liquor.

  2. Cool the liquor, then skim it.

  3. Strain the liquor through a thick cloth.

Make the purée

  1. Place the liquor over the fire with the turnips, onion, and celery.

  2. Boil until soft.

  3. Rub the mixture through a colander back into the liquor.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, and parsley.

  5. Return to the fire with the butter and flour, and stir until combined.

  6. Heat the milk with a pinch of baking soda in another vessel.

  7. After the purée has cooked for three minutes, stir in the milk.

  8. Pour into a tureen.

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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Turnips
Break down when boiled and rubbed through, giving the purée its body and thick texture.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the finished purée.
Flour
Thickens the purée as it cooks with the butter, giving it a smooth, stable body.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softens the purée's flavour when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Stir in the milk at the right time. The milk is added only after the purée has cooked for three minutes. Adding it earlier or letting it boil hard can cause curdling and a grainy texture, so it should be heated separately and stirred in gently.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, turnip, celery, pepper, parsley, butter, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, turnip, celery, pepper, parsley, butter, flour. 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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