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Turnip Cups

Turnip cups are small turnips hollowed, filled with hot peas, and sprinkled with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,842 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Turnip Cups

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turnips

  1. Select small turnips of uniform size and pare them.

  2. Scoop out a little of the center and boil the turnips in salted water until tender.

Fill and serve

  1. Prepare white sauce and heat the peas until hot.

  2. Fill the turnip cups with the hot peas and sprinkle with parsley.

  3. Serve 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. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + peastop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,350 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Peas + parsleytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,885 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Turnip + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sauce + parsleytop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,693 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Small turnips
Serve as the edible cup that holds the filling.
White sauce
Adds moisture and a creamy, binding texture to the peas.
Peas
Form the main filling, adding sweetness and soft texture.

The step that matters

Scooping out the turnips. Removing too little leaves the cups thick and underdone, while removing too much makes them fragile. Boiling until tender ensures the shell is soft enough to eat and hold its shape.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, sauce, parsley):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, sauce, parsley. 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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