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Turnip-cabbage, with Cream Sauce

A dish of sliced turnip-cabbage simmered in butter and cream sauce, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and cabbage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 897 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Turnip-cabbage, with Cream Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and cut the Turnip-Cabbages into scallops.

Cook and finish

  1. Boil them in lightly salted water with a piece of butter until tender.

  2. Drain the water and add the Cream sauce and another piece of butter.

  3. Season with salt and pepper, then toss well in the pan.

  4. Serve immediately.

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 + cabbagetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

  4. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Turnip-cabbages
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender when boiled.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded flavor to the vegetables.
Cream sauce
Adds moisture and a creamy coating that clings to the vegetables.

The step that matters

Boil until tender, then drain well. Boiling until just tender keeps the vegetables from turning mushy, and draining off the water before adding the cream sauce keeps the sauce from thinning and becoming watery.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, butter, cream, sauce, 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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