Name: To Boil Turnips {Garden, White}
Ingredients: turnips; salt; butter; white sauce or Bechamel sauce

Why it works: Butter and sauce 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 ↓

To Boil Turnips {Garden, White}

Ingredients

turnips
salt
butter
white sauce or Bechamel sauce

Directions

Thoroughly wash the turnips, peel them, and soak in cold water.
Put the turnips into a saucepan of boiling salted water for 30 minutes.
Check for tenderness, then drain the turnips.
Serve the turnips on a plate and pour over white sauce or Bechamel sauce.

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.

Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together15,338 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Turnip + saucetop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together943 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Turnip + buttertop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,100 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and sauce 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

Swap the turnip

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

Shallotfits better
Mustardfits better
Onionfits better
Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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To Boil Turnips {Garden, White}