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Turnips in White Sauce

Turnips cooked in butter and served with white sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Turnips in White Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turnips

  1. Wash and peel the turnips.

  2. Cut them into shapes similar to Jerusalem artichokes.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the turnips in a saucepan of water until tender, adding the butter.

  2. Drain the turnips in a colander.

  3. Arrange the turnips neatly on a dish.

  4. Pour the white sauce over the turnips and serve hot.

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. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 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 + buttertop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,100 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

White turnips
Form the main body of the dish, becoming soft and tender when boiled.
White sauce
Adds moisture and a creamy, rich coating over the cooked turnips.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the boiled turnips a smoother flavor.

The step that matters

Boil the turnips until tender. Turnips must be cooked through to be soft and palatable. Underboiled pieces stay firm and starchy, while overcooking makes them waterlogged and crumbly, so check them with a knife as they cook.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Onionfits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, butter. 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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