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Creamed Turnips

Creamed turnips are boiled turnips mixed with white sauce, sugar, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,147 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Creamed Turnips

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Peel the turnips and cut them into cubes.

  2. Boil the turnips in salted water until tender, adding the sugar after the first ten minutes.

  3. Drain the turnips and place them in a hot dish.

  4. Pour the white sauce 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. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Turnip + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Turnip + white peppertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together275 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

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

  5. White pepper + saucetop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together525 recipes

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 become tender when boiled.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that softens the turnips' natural bitterness.
White sauce
Adds moisture and richness that coats the cooked turnips.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, sugar, sauce. 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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