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Glazed Turnips

Turnips simmered in broth with sugar, then reduced to a glaze and served.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and olive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 473 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenol, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Glazed Turnips

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim the turnips to a uniform size and shape.

  2. Wash the turnips in cold salted water and drain.

Cook and glaze

  1. Stand the turnips upright in a pan and cover with rich broth.

  2. Add a pinch of sugar and boil for 20 minutes or until tender.

  3. Remove the turnips and reduce the sauce until it becomes a glaze.

  4. Return the turnips to the pan and coat them with the glaze.

  5. Serve.

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 + olivetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together473 recipes

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

  2. Turnip + sugartop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Olive + sugartop 35% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,483 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Olive and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,483 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 simmer in the broth.
Broth
Cooks the turnips and reduces into the glaze that coats them.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the reduced liquid brown and thicken into a glaze.

The step that matters

Reduce the sauce until it becomes a glaze. Reducing concentrates the broth and sugar as water evaporates, so the liquid thickens and clings to the turnips. Stopping too early leaves a thin sauce that runs off; reducing too far can scorch the sugar or make the glaze overly salty.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (olive, sugar):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, sugar. 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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