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Porridge of Turnips

A creamy turnip porridge made with milk, butter, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Porridge of Turnips

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turnips

  1. Pare and slice the turnips.

  2. Boil the turnips in a mixture of milk and water until tender.

  3. Strain the turnips, discarding the liquid, and rub them through a sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. In a stewpan, combine the turnip puree with butter, flour, cream, sugar, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  2. Stir well and heat through before serving.

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

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

  2. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  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

Turnips
Form the main body of the porridge once cooked and pureed.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the puree.
Flour
Thickens the puree so it holds a porridge-like consistency.
Cream
Adds richness and softens the flavour of the turnip.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the earthy bitterness of the turnip.

The step that matters

Rubbing the turnips through a sieve. Pushing the cooked turnips through a sieve breaks down fibres and produces a smooth puree. Leftover lumps or strings will make the porridge grainy, so the turnips should be fully tender before straining.

Swap the turnip

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, flour, cream, sugar, 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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