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Turnips a LA Creme

Creamed turnips made with butter, flour, pepper, and milk or cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Turnips a LA Creme

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the turnips

  1. Peel and boil the turnips in salted water until tender.

  2. Drain the turnips thoroughly.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the flour, pepper, salt, and a small quantity of milk or cream to the melted butter.

  3. Add the turnips to the saucepan and simmer gently for a few minutes.

  4. Serve warm.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Small new turnips
Form the main body of the dish, becoming soft and tender when boiled.
Butter
Melts to enrich the sauce and carry flavour, adding richness to the dish.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter and milk or cream into a smooth, creamy coating.
Milk or cream
Loosens the flour and butter into a creamy sauce that coats the turnips.

The step that matters

Add the flour to the melted butter. Cooking the flour in the butter before adding liquid helps it blend smoothly. Adding flour without cooking it, or adding too much liquid at once, can leave lumps in the sauce.

Swap the turnip

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

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

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