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Turnip Radishes, to Boil

Boiled young turnip radishes served with melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and radish share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Turnip Radishes, to Boil

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the radishes well and trim them, leaving about an inch of the stalks.

  2. Soak the radishes in cold water for 30 minutes.

  3. Drain the radishes and place them in a pot of boiling salted water.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil gently until tender, about 15 to 25 minutes.

  2. Drain and serve in a tureen with melted butter poured over them.

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 + radishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together35 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Radish + buttertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together180 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  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

Young turnip radishes
Form the main body of the dish, softening into a tender, mild vegetable when boiled.
Melted butter
Adds richness and fat, coating the cooked radishes for a smooth mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Boil gently until tender. Boiling vigorously can break up the radishes and leave them unevenly cooked, while gentle simmering cooks them through evenly until a knife slides in easily.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Cucumberfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against radish, 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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