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Sauce

Excellent Turnip, or Artichoke Sauce for Boiled Meat

A creamy sauce made from boiled turnips or Jerusalem artichokes, butter, flour, and cream, served over boiled meats.

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 ↓

Excellent Turnip, or Artichoke Sauce for Boiled Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the purée

  1. Pare, slice, and boil the turnips or artichokes until tender.

  2. Press the water from them and pass through a sieve.

Make the sauce

  1. In a clean saucepan, dissolve the butter and stir in the flour until smooth.

  2. Gradually pour in the cream while shaking the saucepan until it boils.

  3. Add the turnips or artichokes and salt, mixing well until hot.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over boiled mutton, veal, lamb, or poultry.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Turnip + buttertop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,100 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 or jerusalem artichokes
Provide the bulk and body of the sauce once pureed.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter and cream.
Cream
Forms the liquid base, adding richness and a silky texture.

The step that matters

Gradually pour in the cream while shaking the saucepan until it boils. Adding cream slowly to the butter and flour roux keeps it smooth and prevents lumps. Stirring or shaking as it heats distributes the starch evenly, so the sauce thickens without scorching or clumping.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, cream. 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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