Name: Rutabaga, or Swedish Turnip
Ingredients: 1 rutabaga; 1/3 cup potatoes; water; salt

Why it works: Rutabaga and potato work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 138 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Rutabaga, or Swedish Turnip

Ingredients

1 rutabaga
1/3 cup potatoes
water
salt

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

Peel and chop the rutabaga into cubes.
Peel and chop the potatoes.

Cook and serve

Boil the rutabaga in salted water until tender.
Add the potatoes to the boiling rutabaga for the last 15 minutes.
Drain and mash the rutabaga and potatoes together until smooth.
Season to taste and serve.

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.

Rutabaga + potatotop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together138 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Rutabaga: Forms the main body of the mash and gives it its sweet, earthy flavour.
Potatoes: Add starch that makes the mash smoother and creamier as it breaks down.

“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.