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Turnip a LA Blot

Creamed turnip made with butter, flour, milk, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Towanda, Pa. Christ church. Young ladies society. [from old catalog] · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Turnip a LA Blot

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turnip

  1. Peel and slice the turnip half an inch thick, cut into dice pieces.

  2. Boil in salted water until tender; drain.

Make the cream

  1. Make a cream by whisking a gill of milk, one teaspoon flour, one tablespoon butter, and salt.

  2. Mix butter and flour together until smooth, then stir into the milk.

Combine and serve

  1. Pour the cream over the turnip and let it boil up once.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

706Calories
21 gProtein
21 gFat
107 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 3 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Towanda, Pa. Christ church. Young ladies society. [from old catalog]. 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. See the original page.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Turnip (in the method)
Forms the bulk of the dish and provides its main body and mild sweetness when cooked.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the cream, giving it a smooth, pourable body.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce as its starch gelatinises with heat.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the flour blend smoothly into the cream.

The step that matters

Mix the butter and flour until smooth before adding the milk. Raw flour clumps when dropped into liquid. Blending it with butter first coats the starch granules so they disperse evenly, and the starch then thickens the milk uniformly as it heats.

“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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