Skip to main content
Main

Mashed Turnips

A simple dish of boiled and mashed white turnips seasoned with salt and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Turnip and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 25% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,100 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Mashed Turnips

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash, peel, and cut the turnips into eighths.

Cook and mash

  1. Cook in boiling salted water until soft, adding salt during the last half hour.

  2. Drain the turnips very well, then mash them.

Finish

  1. Season with butter and additional salt to taste.

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 + buttertop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,100 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Round white turnips
Form the main body of the dish; cooking softens them into a mashable texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, smoothing the mash and carrying flavor.

The step that matters

Drain the turnips very well. Turnips hold a lot of water. Excess moisture left in the mash dilutes flavor and makes it loose and watery, so draining thoroughly before mashing keeps the texture thick.

“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.

You might also like

Turnip SoupTurnip Soup43 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes