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Stewed Turnips

A dish of boiled turnips simmered with sugar, butter, stock, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Stewed Turnips

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the cubed turnips until tender.

  2. Drain the turnips.

  3. In a pan, combine the turnips with sugar, butter, stock, salt, and pepper.

  4. Cook rapidly until the stock has almost boiled away.

  5. Serve hot.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Turnip + sugartop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Turnips
Form the bulk of the dish, softening through boiling and absorbing the buttery stock.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and giving the turnips a glossy coating.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the turnips' slightly bitter, peppery edge and aids browning.
Stock
Supplies liquid and savoury flavour, which reduces to a concentrated coating around the turnips.

The step that matters

Cook rapidly until the stock has almost boiled away. If the pan is left too long, the turnips scorch on the bottom and the sugar can burn. Stopping while a little liquid remains keeps the vegetables moist and glazed.

Swap the turnip

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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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