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Stewed Turnips

A simple stew of sliced young turnips cooked with milk, butter, flour, pepper, and salt.

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

Stewed Turnips

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and slice the young turnips.

  2. Boil the sliced turnips in salted water for 15 minutes.

  3. Drain the water.

Stew

  1. Add ½ cup of milk and boiling fresh water.

  2. When heated, stir in butter rolled in flour, along with pepper and salt to taste.

  3. Simmer for 10 minutes or until tender.

Serve

  1. Pour the stew into a deep dish.

  2. Serve very hot.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Young turnips
Form the main body of the stew and soften into tender pieces when simmered.
Milk
Adds richness and a creamy, smooth texture to the stewing liquid.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and coats the stew for a silkier mouthfeel.
Flour
Rolled with the butter, it helps thicken the stewing liquid as it heats.

The step that matters

Stirring in the butter rolled in flour. Flour added directly to hot liquid can clump; rolling it in butter first helps it disperse evenly so the stew thickens smoothly rather than lumpy.

Swap the turnip

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, flour, 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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