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Carrots and Turnips for Minces, Etc

A simple boiled carrot and turnip dish seasoned with salt, pepper, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Carrots and Turnips for Minces, Etc

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the vegetables

  1. Boil diced carrots and turnips in salted water until tender, about 30 minutes.

  2. Strain the vegetables and return them to the pot.

Season and serve

  1. Add pepper, salt, and butter to the vegetables.

  2. Shake over low heat for a few minutes before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Carrot + buttertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Carrots
Provide the main body and natural sweetness of the dish as they soften.
Turnips
Add a mild, slightly peppery flavor and firm texture once cooked through.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky coating that carries the seasoning over the vegetables.

The step that matters

Boiling until tender. Carrots and turnips are dense root vegetables, so they need full cooking through to become soft and evenly textured. Pulling them early leaves a firm, starchy center that does not taste as good.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, pepper, 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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