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To Boil Turnips and Mash Them

Boiled turnips mashed with butter and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,252 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

To Boil Turnips and Mash Them

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Bring 2 quarts of warm water and 1 tablespoon of coarse sea salt to a boil in a saucepan.

  2. Wash the turnips in cold water and peel them thickly with a sharp knife.

  3. If the turnips are very large, cut them into quarters.

Boil and drain

  1. Once the water is boiling, add the turnips and boil gently until tender.

  2. Check tenderness with a fork.

  3. Drain the turnips in a colander until very dry.

  4. For mashed turnips, press them dry in the colander with a plate.

Mash and serve

  1. Rub the drained turnips through a colander with a wooden spoon into a saucepan.

  2. Add 1 ounce of butter and pepper to taste.

  3. Heat the saucepan on the stove, stirring until the butter is mixed and the turnips are warmed through.

  4. Serve on a hot dish.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  3. Turnip + buttertop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,100 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Turnips
Form the bulk of the dish; their starch and fibre become a smooth purée when mashed.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the mashed turnips a smoother mouthfeel and flavour.

The step that matters

Drain the turnips until very dry. Excess water dilutes the flavour and makes mashed turnips loose and watery, so pressing them dry in the colander before mashing keeps the texture thick.

Swap the turnip

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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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