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Mashed Turnips, Carrots, or Parsnips

A mash of boiled turnips, carrots, or parsnips mixed with butter, salt, cream, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Mashed Turnips, Carrots, or Parsnips

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the turnips.

  2. Wash the turnips.

Cook and mash

  1. Boil the turnips in salted water until tender.

  2. Drain the turnips.

  3. Press out all the water.

  4. Pound the turnips in a mortar until smooth.

Finish and serve

  1. In a stew pan, combine the mashed turnips with butter, salt, cream, and flour. Mix thoroughly.

  2. Heat until very hot.

  3. Serve immediately.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Turnip + buttertop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,100 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; mashing them until smooth gives the purée its texture.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the mash.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, loosening the mash into a creamy texture.
Flour
Thickens the mixture so it holds its body when heated.

The step that matters

Press out all the water. Turnips hold a lot of water; if it is not pressed out, the mash turns thin and watery, and the added cream and flour cannot thicken it properly.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cream, 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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