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Turnips a LA Creme

Creamed turnips made with diced turnips, butter, flour, milk, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Turnips a LA Creme

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turnips

  1. Peel and cut the turnips into half‑inch dice.

  2. Boil the turnips in salted water until tender, then drain.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the flour, then gradually add the hot milk, whisking until smooth.

  3. Season the sauce with salt and pepper.

Serve

  1. Pour the cream sauce over the drained turnips and 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Turnips
Form the main body of the dish, cooked until tender enough to be soft and mild.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the flour form a smooth base for the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, creamy sauce that clings to the turnips.
Hot milk
Forms the liquid of the sauce, giving it a creamy texture once thickened.

The step that matters

Adding the milk to the roux. Gradually adding hot milk to the butter and flour mixture while whisking keeps starch granules dispersed, so the sauce thickens smoothly without lumps.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, flour, pepper. 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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