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Turnips Piquant

A creamy sauce made from turnips, margarine, flour, water, egg yolk, lemon juice, parsley, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Turnips Piquant

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt margarine over medium heat.

  2. Stir in flour and cook for 1 minute.

  3. Gradually add water, stirring until thick and creamy.

  4. Season with salt and pepper, and stir in egg yolk off the heat.

Finish and serve

  1. Add lemon juice and parsley, then pour over cooked turnips.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

Turnips
Provide the main body and flavour of the dish, served under the sauce.
Margarine
Fat that coats the flour and carries flavour into the sauce.
Flour
Starch that thickens the water into a smooth, creamy sauce when heated.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and body; stirred in off the heat so it thickens gently without scrambling.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolk off the heat. Egg yolk thickens through gentle heat. If the sauce is still on the burner when it goes in, the yolk can scramble into lumps. Removing the pan first lets it blend smoothly into the thickened sauce.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, pepper, egg, lemon, parsley. 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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