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Turnips

Turnips boiled until tender, then mashed with butter and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Turnips

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 ↓

Turnips

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Bring 2 quarts of warm water and 1 tablespoon of salt to a boil in a saucepan.

  2. Wash the turnips in cold water and peel them thickly with a sharp knife.

  3. If the turnips are very large, cut them into quarters.

Boil and drain

  1. Once the water is boiling, add the turnips and boil gently until tender.

  2. Check tenderness with a fork.

  3. Drain the turnips in a colander until very dry.

  4. Place the turnips on a hot dish.

Mash and finish

  1. To mash, squeeze the turnips dry in the colander, pressing with a plate.

  2. Rub the turnips through the colander into a saucepan using a wooden spoon.

  3. Add 1 ounce of butter and pepper to taste, and stir until well mixed and warmed through.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 of the dish; cooking softens their starch-rich flesh into a mash.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the mash a smooth, silky mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Drain and dry the turnips thoroughly before mashing. Excess water dilutes the mash and makes it loose and watery. Draining well and squeezing out moisture concentrates the flavour and gives a thicker, fluffier texture when the turnips are pushed through the colander.

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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