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A Vegetable Tower

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and carrot are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 8,001 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Take a high mold that is larger at the bottom than the top.

  2. Layer turnips at the top of the mold, followed by carrots, then any green vegetable.

  3. Place pieces of carrot and turnips cut into squares around the sides of the mold until filled to the top.

  4. Fill the center with potatoes.

  5. Place the mold upside down in a pan of water and cook until the vegetables are done.

  6. Serve the tower with brown gravy or white sauce.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Turnip + carrottop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together8,001 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,105 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Turnip + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together561 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + saucetop 11% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Carrot + saucetop 14% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together2,508 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the potato

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

  1. Parsnipbetter flavor fit
  2. Leekbetter flavor fit
  3. Beetrootbetter flavor fit
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, carrot, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

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