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Carrots and Turnips a LA Poulette

A creamy vegetable dish of carrots and turnips cooked in butter and stock, finished with cream, egg yolks, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Carrots and Turnips a LA Poulette

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Wash, scrape, and cut the carrots and turnips into shapes.

  2. Cover the vegetables with boiling water and let stand for five minutes.

  3. Drain the vegetables and cook them in boiling salted water with 1/2 tablespoon butter until soft.

Make the sauce

  1. In a separate pan, melt 3 tablespoons butter and add 3 tablespoons flour.

  2. Gradually pour in 1 cup white stock and bring to a boil.

  3. Once boiling, add 1/2 cup cream, 2 egg yolks, and 1/2 tablespoon lemon juice.

  4. Season with salt and pepper, then combine the sauce with the drained vegetables.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Carrot + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Carrots
Provide the main vegetable body and sweetness once cooked until soft.
Turnips
Add a firm, mildly sweet vegetable texture that holds its cut shape.
Flour
Thickens the butter into a roux that gives the sauce body.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce, adding richness and a smooth texture.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, silky mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat. If the sauce is boiling hot when they go in, they can scramble and turn grainy, so the sauce should be taken off the heat or kept well below boiling before adding them.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, butter, sauce, flour, cream, egg):

  1. Raisinfits about as well
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Coconutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, butter, sauce, flour, cream, egg. 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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