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Bread of Wheat and Turnips

A simple bread made from wheat flour and mashed boiled turnips.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,874 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Bread of Wheat and Turnips

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turnips

  1. Boil the turnips.

  2. Mash the boiled turnips and squeeze out excess water.

Make and bake the bread

  1. Mix equal quantities of wheat flour and mashed turnips.

  2. Make the dough as usual.

  3. Shape the dough.

  4. Bake for a considerable time.

  5. Let it rest for 12 hours before cutting.

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. Flour + turniptop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Wheat + turniptop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together41 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Wheat flour
Provides the main structure of the dough as it is mixed and shaped.
Turnips
Add moisture and body to the dough, giving the bread a softer texture.

The step that matters

Squeeze out excess water from the mashed turnips. Turnips hold a lot of water. Excess moisture left in the mash makes the dough too wet and sticky, which affects how it shapes and bakes.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Kalefits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wheat, flour. 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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