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Pickled Turnips

Pickled turnips are boiled turnips preserved in a vinegar, spice, and sugar brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,806 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Pickled Turnips

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the turnips until tender and let them cool.

  2. Scald enough vinegar to cover the turnips.

  3. Add spices and sugar to the vinegar to taste.

Pickle

  1. Pour the cooled vinegar mixture over the 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. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Turnip + vinegartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together652 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Turnip + sugartop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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 soak up the vinegar brine as they cool.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that gives the pickle its tang and helps preserve it.
Sugar
Balances the sourness of the vinegar for a rounder, sweeter flavor.
Spices
Add aromatic flavor that infuses the vinegar and carries into the turnips.

The step that matters

Let the vinegar mixture cool before pouring it over the turnips. Hot liquid keeps cooking the tender turnips, which can make them soft and mushy. Cooling the vinegar first keeps them firm and gives them a cleaner bite.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, sugar):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar. 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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