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The Carrots and Turnips

A simmered side dish of carrots and turnips in bouillon, butter, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

The Carrots and Turnips

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, combine the carrots, bouillon, sugar, and butter.

  2. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer slowly until the juice thickens and becomes syrupy.

  3. Keep the carrots warm until ready to serve.

  4. Repeat the process with the turnips, omitting the sugar.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Carrot + buttertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Butter + turniptop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,100 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Carrot + sugartop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,211 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Carrots
Form the main body of the dish and absorb the buttery, syrupy glaze as they simmer.
Turnips
Add a second vegetable base that cooks in the same glaze, giving a mild, slightly peppery flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cooking liquid reduce into a syrupy glaze.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the reduced glaze.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly until the juice thickens. Simmering gently lets the liquid reduce and concentrate its sugars into a glaze. If heat is too high, the sugars can scorch on the pan base before the liquid thickens.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, sugar, butter. 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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