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Ragout of Turnips

A stew of peeled turnips cooked with butter, sugar, and seasoned gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 98,233 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Ragout of Turnips

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel enough small turnips to fill a dish.

  2. Place them in a stew pan with some butter and a little sugar.

Cook

  1. Set the pan over a hot stove and shake the turnips until they are browned.

  2. Pour in ½ pint of rich high seasoned gravy.

  3. Stew the turnips until tender.

Serve

  1. Serve the turnips with the gravy poured over them.

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 + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Small turnips
Form the main body of the dish and soften into a tender vegetable base.
Butter
Fat that helps the turnips brown in the pan and adds richness.
Sugar
Caramelises on the turnips' surface, adding sweetness and browning.
Rich high seasoned gravy
Adds savoury depth and moisture that coats the turnips when served.

The step that matters

Browning the turnips over a hot stove. Sugar and butter brown on the turnip surface through the Maillard reaction and caramelisation, which adds flavour. If the pan is too cool or the turnips are crowded, they steam instead of browning, and the dish tastes flat.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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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