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Stewed Potatoes with Turnips

A simple stew of boiled potatoes and turnips mixed with butter, mustard, and hot milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 290 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Stewed Potatoes with Turnips

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Pare and boil equal quantities of turnips and potatoes until tender.

  2. Drain and mash the turnips and potatoes together.

Stew

  1. Melt some butter in a stew pan and add a little mustard.

  2. Stir in the mashed mixture and a small quantity of hot milk.

  3. Stew for about ten minutes.

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 + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Potato + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,340 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Turnip + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Turnips
Form the bulk of the stew, adding a mild, slightly peppery flavour.
Potatoes
Mash to a soft, thick body that holds the stew together.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour through the stew.
Hot milk
Loosens the mash and adds moisture for a smoother texture.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, butter, mustard, milk. 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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