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Stewed Turnips with Milk Sauce

A dish of turnips simmered in water, then finished in a milk sauce seasoned with coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,874 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Stewed Turnips with Milk Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and wash the turnips.

  2. Cut them into thin slices or small cubes.

Cook and make the sauce

  1. Cook the turnips in boiling water for about 20 minutes.

  2. Drain the turnips and add 1 cup of milk.

  3. Season with coarse sea salt.

  4. Heat the milk to boiling.

  5. Thicken the sauce with a little flour.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Turnip + milktop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together865 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Turnips
Provide the main body of the dish, becoming tender when simmered in water.
Milk
Forms the base of the sauce, adding moisture and a creamy texture.
Flour
Thickens the milk sauce, giving it body as it heats.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce with a little flour. Flour must be stirred into the hot milk so its starch swells evenly; added in clumps or to a sauce that is not hot enough, it leaves lumps and a floury taste.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour. 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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