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Turnips and Peas

Turnips and peas is a dish of boiled turnips with peas, seasoned with salt, pepper, cream, butter, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Turnips and Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turnips

  1. Boil the white turnips in salted water until tender.

  2. Remove from heat and place in cold water for five minutes.

  3. When cool, scoop out the insides, leaving cups of the turnips.

Make the peas and serve

  1. Boil green peas, season with coarse sea salt, black pepper, and cream.

  2. Reheat the turnip cups.

  3. Add butter to the peas.

  4. Fill the cups with peas.

  5. Serve.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Peas + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

White turnips
Form the edible cups that hold the filling, becoming tender when boiled.
Green peas
Provide the main filling, cooking to a soft texture and adding sweetness.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the peas a smoother, rounder mouthfeel.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, softening the flavour of the peas.

The step that matters

Scoop out the turnips while cool. Scooping while the turnips are still hot risks tearing the cups and burning fingers. Letting them cool in cold water firms the flesh so the walls hold their shape.

Swap the peas

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, pepper, cream, 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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