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Browned Turnips

Turnips sautéed in butter with salt, pepper, and soft sugar until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and turnip are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,252 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Browned Turnips

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and slice the turnips.

  2. Boil the turnips in water until tender, about 20 minutes.

  3. Drain the turnips.

Brown and serve

  1. Heat the butter in a frying pan until smoking hot.

  2. Add the turnips to the pan.

  3. Sprinkle with salt, pepper, and soft sugar.

  4. Turn the turnips until well browned on both sides.

  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. Pepper + turniptop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,252 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Butter + turniptop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,100 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + turniptop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,330 recipes

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

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 when boiled and browning on the outside in the pan.
Butter
Conducts heat to the turnips and adds richness and flavour to the browned surface.
Soft sugar
Caramelises in the hot pan, helping the turnips brown and adding sweetness.

The step that matters

Turn the turnips until well browned on both sides. The turnips must be dry after draining and the pan very hot. Surface moisture steams the pieces instead of browning them, and sugar can burn if the heat is too high.

Swap the turnip

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, 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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