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Turnips, Young

A simple dish of young turnips simmered in milk, butter, flour, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Turnips, Young

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and peel the turnips.

  2. Place the turnips in a saucepan with the milk.

Simmer

  1. Add pepper and salt, then simmer gently for about 15 minutes.

  2. When the turnips are half-cooked, add the butter rolled in flour.

  3. Continue to simmer for another 15 minutes until tender.

  4. Serve very hot.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Young turnips
Provide the main vegetable, becoming tender and sweet as they simmer in the milk.
Milk
Forms the creamy cooking liquid that gives the turnips a soft, rich texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, enriching the sauce as it melts into the milk.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce when mixed with the melting butter.

The step that matters

Adding the butter rolled in flour. Flour needs to be stirred into the hot liquid and cooked for a while to thicken smoothly; added all at once or too cold, it can clump. Keeping the simmer gentle prevents scorching and curdling of the milk.

Swap the turnip

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, pepper, butter, flour. 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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