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Puree of Turnips

A smooth purée made from boiled turnips, butter, cream, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Puree of Turnips

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turnips

  1. Peel the turnips and slice them.

  2. Boil the turnips until soft enough to mash.

Make the puree

  1. Rub the turnips through a colander.

  2. Return the turnips to the heat.

  3. Beat in the melted butter and then the cream.

  4. Season with pepper and salt.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  4. Cream + peppertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Cream and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 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

White turnips
Form the main body of the puree once boiled and pushed through a colander.
Melted butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the puree.
Cream
Adds moisture and creaminess, loosening the puree and softening its texture.

The step that matters

Boil the turnips until soft enough to mash. Turnips that are not fully tender will stay fibrous and grainy, and they will not pass smoothly through a colander. Cooking until they are soft lets the starch and cell walls break down so the puree becomes smooth.

Swap the turnip

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cream, 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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