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Turnip a LA Blot

A creamy turnip dish with butter, flour, milk, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 turnips

  1. Peel and slice the turnips into ½‑inch thick pieces, then cut them into dice.

  2. Boil the turnip pieces in salted water until tender.

  3. Drain the water from the turnips.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, mix the butter and flour until smooth.

  2. Stir in the milk and add salt.

  3. Pour the cream mixture over the turnips and bring to a boil.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Turnips
Form the bulk of the dish and give it a tender, mild body.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce as its starch swells with heat.
Milk
Provides the liquid and creaminess that form the sauce.

The step that matters

Mix the butter and flour until smooth. Flour needs to be fully blended into the fat before liquid is added, so its starch disperses evenly. Otherwise lumps form and the sauce thickens unevenly when heated.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Turnipthe original

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