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Turnips, Fried

Turnips fried in hot fat with onion, butter, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,585 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Turnips, Fried

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turnips

  1. Boil the turnips until they are three-quarters cooked and drain them.

  2. Cut them into slices.

Fry

  1. Fry in hot fat until lightly browned and tender.

Soak

  1. Peel the turnips.

  2. Slice the turnips thinly.

  3. Soak in cold water for 1 hour, then drain.

Braise with onion

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan.

  2. Sauté the chopped onion for 5 minutes.

  3. Add the turnip slices.

  4. Season with pepper and salt.

  5. Steam until soft, adding a spoonful or two of water if needed.

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 + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Turnips
Form the main body of the dish and become tender when cooked.
Hot fat
Browns the turnip surfaces and gives them a crisp, golden exterior.
Butter
Adds richness and fat for flavour as the turnips cook.
Onion
Adds aroma and mild sweetness when sautéed in butter.

The step that matters

Frying in hot fat. The fat must be hot enough to brown the turnip surfaces quickly. If it is too cool, the slices absorb grease and turn soggy instead of golden.

Swap the turnip

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, 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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