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Turnips, Brown Puree of

A puree of turnips cooked with butter, sauce tournee, veal gravy, salt, sugar, served with fried toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Turnips, Brown Puree of

Ingredients

Directions

Make the puree

  1. Sweat the turnips in butter over low heat until tender, being careful not to burn them.

  2. Moisten the cooked turnips with sauce tournee and veal gravy.

  3. Season well and rub the mixture through a fine sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Add a small lump of sugar before serving to balance the bitterness of the turnips.

  2. Serve with fried toasts of bread.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sauce + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Veal + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,056 recipes

    Shared aroma: cis-3-hexenol (green, grassy).

  5. Turnip + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together831 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Turnips
Form the bulk of the puree, providing the main flavour and body once cooked and sieved.
Butter
Gently cooks the turnips in fat, adding richness and a soft texture.
Sauce tournee
Moistens the cooked turnips, adding body and a smooth, saucy consistency.
Veal gravy
Adds savoury depth and browned meaty flavour to the puree.
Sugar
Balances the bitterness of the turnips with a touch of sweetness.

The step that matters

Sweat the turnips gently. Over high heat the butter and turnip sugars can scorch and turn bitter and dark, spoiling the flavour. Low heat softens the turnips evenly while keeping them pale and sweet, so the puree tastes clean.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sauce, veal, sugar, bread. 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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