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Turnip Salad

A hot salad of boiled turnips, bacon, and poached eggs, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,252 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Turnip Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick turnips early in the morning and wash them.

  2. Soak the turnips in cold water.

Cook the turnips

  1. Boil a piece of bacon in water until reduced.

  2. Remove the bacon.

  3. Add the turnips to the boiling water.

  4. Place the bacon back on top of the turnips.

  5. Boil until very tender.

  6. Remove the turnips with a skimmer.

Assemble and serve

  1. Place the turnips in a deep dish.

  2. Skim the fat from the cooking liquid.

  3. Pour the fat over the turnips.

  4. Top with poached eggs.

  5. Cover.

  6. Serve hot.

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 + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,252 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Turnip + eggtop 36% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,077 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

Egg and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Turnips
Form the main body of the salad and absorb the flavor of the bacon fat.
Bacon
Flavors the cooking water and yields fat that adds savoriness to the turnips.
Eggs
Add richness and creaminess when the yolks are spread over the turnips.

The step that matters

Boil until very tender. Turnips need enough time in simmering water for their starch and fibers to soften fully. Stopping early leaves them firm and fibrous, which makes the salad unpleasant to eat.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper. 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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