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Turnips with White Sauce

Turnips cooked in a white sauce of milk, cornstarch, butter, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Turnips with White Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turnips

  1. Peel and quarter the turnips.

  2. Soak them in cold water for 30 minutes.

  3. Boil the turnips in hot water until tender, then drain.

Make the white sauce

  1. In a saucepan, heat the milk and thicken it with cornstarch.

  2. Stir in the butter, pepper, and salt to season.

Combine and serve

  1. Combine the turnips with the sauce in a heatproof dish.

  2. Place the dish in a larger vessel of boiling water and cover.

  3. Let it stand for 10 minutes before serving.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Milk + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26,984 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  5. Turnip + buttertop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,100 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 soaked.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the white sauce, giving it creaminess.
Cornstarch
Thickens the heated milk into a smooth sauce as its starch swells.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the finished white sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening the milk with cornstarch. Cornstarch must be heated in the milk until the starch swells and the sauce thickens; if it is not heated enough, the sauce stays thin and can taste starchy.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, 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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