Why it works: Turnip and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,874 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Turnips a LA Poulette
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the turnips
Peel and wash the turnips.
Trim them into olive or pear shapes.
Place the turnips in cold salted water and bring to a boil.
Drain the turnips, rinse in cold water, and dry with a clean napkin.
Make the sauce
In a saucepan, melt the butter and whisk in the flour.
Gradually add the vegetable stock to make a velouté sauce.
Add the turnips to the sauce and cook gently for 20-25 minutes, depending on their size.
Remove the turnips and keep them warm.
Add the castor sugar to the sauce and bring to a boil.
Finish and serve
Just before serving, stir in the egg yolk and small pieces of butter.
Do not let the sauce re-boil.
Season with pepper and salt.
Pour the sauce over the turnips.
Serve hot.
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.
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Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together2,874 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Turnip + peppertop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together5,252 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 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
- Turnips
- Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender as they cook gently in the sauce.
- Butter
- Enriches the sauce with fat, giving it a smooth, rich mouthfeel.
- Flour
- Thickens the stock into a velouté sauce by forming a starch-based roux with the butter.
- Egg yolk
- Enriches and thickens the sauce, giving it a smooth, velvety body when heated gently.
- Castor sugar
- Adds a touch of sweetness that balances the savoury stock and mellows the turnip flavour.
The step that matters
Do not let the sauce re-boil after adding the egg yolk. Egg yolk thickens by gentle heat; if the sauce boils after it is added, the yolk can scramble and curdle, leaving the sauce grainy instead of smooth.
Swap the turnip
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, sugar, egg, pepper):
- Capsicumfits better
- Chivefits better
- Shallotfits better
- Turnipthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, sugar, egg, 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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