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Stewed Turnips, Convent Stile

A creamy stew of turnips, marrow, and eggs cooked in chicken broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Stewed Turnips, Convent Stile

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare and cut the turnips into quarters, then trim the edges.

  2. Parboil the turnips for 5 minutes and drain them.

Stew and finish

  1. In a saucepan, combine the turnips, chicken broth, salt, sugar, and marrow.

  2. Cover and cook until the broth is reduced by three-quarters.

  3. Remove from heat and add butter and cream mixed with egg yolks. Toss until the butter melts and 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Turnips
Form the main body of the dish and absorb the flavour of the broth as they stew.
Chicken broth
Provides the cooking liquid, which reduces to a concentrated savoury sauce.
Marrow
Adds richness and fatty, savoury depth to the broth as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat and smooth richness to the reduced broth when tossed in off the heat.
Cream
Adds richness and body, thickening the sauce together with the egg yolks.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cream and butter into a smooth, lightly set sauce that coats the turnips.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk and cream mixture off the heat. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat. Adding them to a boiling pan can scramble them, so the mixture must be removed from heat before the cream and yolks go in and tossed gently.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, sugar, butter, cream, egg. 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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