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Stewed Turnips, Spanish Style

Stewed turnips cooked with butter, white broth, Espagnole sauce, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Stewed Turnips, Spanish Style

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turnips

  1. Peel and round the turnips to be of equal size.

  2. Parboil the turnips for 3 minutes, then drain them.

Cook the turnips

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and lightly fry the turnips.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, and sugar, then moisten with white broth.

  3. Finish cooking the turnips until done, then dish them up.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Reduce the broth to a light glaze and stir in the Espagnole sauce.

  2. Remove from heat, add a piece of butter, and stir until melted.

  3. Add finely chopped parsley and pour the sauce over the turnips.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Small young turnips
Form the main body of the stew, becoming tender as they cook through.
Butter
Adds richness and gloss, and helps the turnips brown lightly when fried.
White broth
Moistens the turnips as they finish cooking and reduces to a glaze for the sauce.
Espagnole sauce
Thickens and deepens the reduced broth, giving the glaze body and savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Reducing the broth to a light glaze. If the broth reduces too far it becomes sticky and salty, and if not reduced enough the sauce stays thin and watery. Removing the pan from heat before adding the butter helps it emulsify smoothly into a glossy sauce rather than separating.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, sugar, sauce, parsley. 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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