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Boiled Turnip-radishes

Boiled turnip-radishes served with melted butter or white sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and radish share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Boiled Turnip-radishes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and trim the turnip-radishes, leaving two or three small inner leaves.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil them in plenty of salted water for 20 to 30 minutes until tender.

  2. Drain well and serve with melted butter or white sauce.

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 + radishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together35 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Radish + buttertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together180 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  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

Turnip-radishes
Provide the main vegetable, which becomes tender and mild when boiled.
Melted butter or white sauce
Adds richness and moisture to the mild, boiled vegetable.

The step that matters

Boil until tender. Boiling in plenty of salted water cooks the roots evenly through. Too little time leaves them firm at the centre, while overcooking makes them soft and watery, so check for tenderness at the lower end of the time.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Cucumberfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against radish, butter. 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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