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Turnips and Carrots a LA Parisienne

Boiled turnips and carrots served with butter or optional white sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Turnips and Carrots a LA Parisienne

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the turnips and carrots into small balls like marbles using a potato gouge.

Cook

  1. Boil the carrot balls in one saucepan and the turnip balls in another until tender.

  2. Drain the vegetables and mix them in a deep dish.

Season and serve

  1. Season with salt, pepper, and butter, or cover with a good white sauce if desired.

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 + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Turnip + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 main body of the dish, with a firm bite once boiled until tender.
Carrots
Add sweetness and colour alongside the turnip balls.
Butter
Adds richness and a glossy coating to the cooked vegetables.

The step that matters

Boil the carrot and turnip balls in separate saucepans until tender. Carrots and turnips cook at different rates and can be unevenly done if boiled together. Cooking them separately lets each reach tenderness on its own, and draining them well keeps the butter and sauce from being diluted by excess water.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Parsnipfits about as well
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, pepper, butter, sauce. 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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