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Hashed Turnips

A simple sautéed turnip dish seasoned with salt, pepper, butter, and optional flour, water, and stock or milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,874 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Hashed Turnips

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the drained turnips into large pieces.

  2. Return the turnips to a stewpan and add salt, pepper, butter, and water.

  3. Cook over high heat until the turnips absorb all the seasonings.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately.

Variation

  1. For a variation, add salt, pepper, butter, and flour to the turnips.

Finish cooking

  1. Place the stewpan over high heat and shake frequently to toss the turnips.

  2. After 5 minutes, add meat stock or milk and cook for an additional 10 minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + meattop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Turnips
Form the bulk of the dish and soften as they cook, absorbing the seasonings.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor and helps coat the turnips as they cook.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid so it clings to the turnips.

The step that matters

Cooking over high heat with little water. Only a few tablespoons of water are added, so once it evaporates the turnips can scorch on the hot pan. Shaking the pan often keeps them moving and cooking evenly.

Swap the turnip

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, flour, meat. 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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