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Vegetable Scoops

A dish of diced carrots, turnips, cauliflower, French beans, onions, tomatoes simmered in white sauce and seasoned with salt, pepper, lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and cauliflower match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 286 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Vegetable Scoops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Cut the carrots and turnips into ¼ inch square pieces or shapes like olives or filberts.

  2. Divide the cauliflower and French beans into small neat pieces.

  3. Cook the vegetables separately in plenty of water with a little salt until tender.

  4. Drain and dry the vegetables.

Combine and serve

  1. In a saucepan, add enough white sauce to moisten the vegetables.

  2. Toss them lightly without breaking.

  3. Heat the mixture until hot.

  4. Serve immediately.

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. Turnip + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together286 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Cauliflower + beanstop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

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

  4. Turnip + beanstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together400 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + beanstop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,443 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

White sauce
Moistens the vegetables and gives the dish a creamy, coating texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour across the vegetables.
Carrots
Provide firm texture and natural sweetness when cooked until tender.
Turnips
Add firm texture and a mildly sweet, earthy flavour when cooked.
Cauliflower
Gives bulk and a tender, mild texture that holds its shape.

The step that matters

Drain and dry the vegetables. Excess water dilutes the white sauce and makes it thin and watery, so the vegetables should be well drained before they are combined with it.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, cauliflower, beans, sauce, butter, onion):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, cauliflower, beans, sauce, butter, onion. 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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