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Stuffed Turnips

Turnips stuffed with bacon, onion, bread crumbs, milk, and butter, then baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,585 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Stuffed Turnips

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turnips

  1. Boil the turnips until tender.

  2. Cut off the tops and scoop out the centers.

Make the filling

  1. Chop the scooped turnip centers finely with bacon, onion, bread crumbs, and milk.

  2. Fry the mixture in butter.

Fill and bake

  1. Fill the turnip shells with the mixture.

  2. Sprinkle with bread crumbs. Add a piece of butter on each.

  3. Bake for 10 minutes.

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 + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Turnip + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,252 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Turnips
Form the edible shell that holds the filling while it bakes.
Bacon
Adds savory fat and flavor that carries through the chopped filling.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and add body so the filling holds together rather than running.
Milk
Moistens the filling so it stays tender and binds with the crumbs.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the filling and top brown lightly in the oven.

The step that matters

Scooping out the turnip centers. Leaving the shells too thick wastes filling space, while cutting too thin can tear them. Even walls let the shells hold their shape and cook evenly.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, onion, bread, pepper):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, onion, bread, 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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