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Turnips Browned in Butter

Thin slices of boiled turnips are sautéed in butter and milk with flour, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 Browned in Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the boiled turnips very thin.

  2. Dust the slices with flour, salt, and pepper.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat the butter and milk in a pan.

  2. Fry the turnip slices in the mixture until they are a delicate brown, using moderate heat.

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. Butter + milktop 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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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 and lightly browned on the surface.
Flour
Coats the slices so they brown evenly and the surface crisps slightly.
Butter
Conducts heat for frying and adds richness and browning to the surface.
Milk
Mixes with the butter in the pan, adding milk solids that help the slices brown.

The step that matters

Fry at moderate heat until delicate brown. Milk solids and flour brown quickly, so high heat can scorch the coating before the turnip inside is cooked through. Moderate heat lets the surface turn golden gradually.

Swap the turnip

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

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

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