Name: Stewed Turnips
Ingredients: turnips; salt; cream sauce; minced parsley; butter; coarse sea salt; white pepper; vinegar

Why it works: Turnip and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,842 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Stewed Turnips

Ingredients

Directions

Peel the turnips thickly to remove the strong flavor from the rind.
Boil the turnips in salted water until tender.
Drain and cut the turnips into cubes.
Pour cream sauce over the cubes and sprinkle with minced parsley.
Alternatively, mash the turnips and season with butter, coarse sea salt, white pepper, and vinegar.

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.

Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,842 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,787 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Parsley + white peppertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,451 recipes

Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).
Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together15,338 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sauce and butter 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

Swap the white pepper

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

Capersfits better
Tarragonfits better
Celeryfits better
White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, cream, sauce, parsley, butter, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.