Skip to main content
Main

Turnip Cup with Peas

Turnip cups filled with peas, butter, parsley, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Turnip Cup with Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the turnips and scoop out hollows to form cups.

  2. Cook the turnips in an uncovered kettle until white and transparent.

Assemble

  1. Place a small piece of butter in each cup.

  2. Sprinkle with chopped parsley, coarse sea salt, and black pepper.

  3. Fill the cups with cooked green peas.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + peastop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,350 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Parsley + peastop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,885 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Medium white turnips
Form the cups that hold the filling and soften to a tender, edible shell when cooked.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, coating the cooked turnip and carrying flavor.
Cooked green peas
Provide sweetness and a soft texture contrasting with the turnip shell.

The step that matters

Cook the turnips until white and transparent. Turnips that are undercooked stay firm and bitter-tasting, while overcooked ones turn watery and collapse. Cooking until they turn translucent means the flesh is tender enough to eat but still holds its cup shape.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, butter, parsley, 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.

You might also like

Green PeasGreen Peas229 recipesTurnip SoupTurnip Soup43 recipesGreen Peas SoupGreen Peas Soup35 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes