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Peas in Turnip Cups

Turnip cups filled with peas, butter, and milk, served as a side dish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Peas in Turnip Cups

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turnips

  1. Pare and shape the turnips into handleless cups, saving the scooped parts for soup.

  2. Boil the turnips in salted water until just tender.

  3. Lift the turnips from the water and pour 1 tablespoon melted butter over the outsides.

Make the peas

  1. In a saucepan, heat the peas.

  2. Add flour moistened in milk and let boil for one minute.

  3. Add ½ teaspoon salt and ½ tablespoon butter, including any liquid that drained from the turnips.

Serve

  1. Place the turnip cups on a platter, fill them with peas, and serve one to each guest.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Turnips
Form the edible cups that hold the peas, and their flesh softens when boiled.
Peas
Provide the filling, adding bulk and a sweet, mild flavor to the dish.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce that coats the peas.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding richness and body.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and flavor, both on the turnips and in the sauce.

The step that matters

Add flour moistened in milk and let boil for one minute. Flour must be fully dispersed in liquid before heating, and it needs to boil to cook out its raw starch taste and reach full thickness. Lumps or undercooked flour make the sauce pasty and floury.

Swap the peas

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, butter, milk, flour. 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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