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Puree of Turnips

A smooth puree made from boiled turnips, butter, salt, pepper, and broth or water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and pepper 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 ↓

Puree of Turnips

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and peel the turnips.

  2. Cut them into small pieces and soak in cold water for 30 minutes.

  3. Drain the turnips and place them in a stew pan.

Cook

  1. Add butter, salt, and pepper.

  2. Moisten with broth or boiling water.

  3. Stew over low heat for 5 to 6 hours, stirring frequently.

Finish and serve

  1. Rub through a sieve and serve with roast meat.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. 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
Provide the main body and flavour of the puree once softened and sieved.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the puree.
Broth or boiling water
Supplies moisture so the turnips can stew gently without drying or scorching.

The step that matters

Stewing over low heat. Long, gentle heat softens the turnip cells evenly and lets the liquid reduce slowly. Higher heat would scorch the bottom of the pan and leave lumps that resist sieving.

Swap the turnip

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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