Name: Puree of Turnips
Ingredients: turnips; butter; coarse sea salt; pepper; stock; cream; potato flour (optional)

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 ↓

Puree of Turnips

Ingredients

Directions

Cut the turnips into slices and boil them for a few minutes.
Drain the turnips and place them in a saucepan with butter, salt, pepper, and stock.
Simmer slowly until the turnips are done.
Pass the cooked turnips through a sieve.
Return the puree to the fire, add cream or butter, and serve hot.
If the puree is too liquid, add potato flour and simmer for a few 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.

Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,874 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Turnip + potatotop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together562 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,305 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Turnip + peppertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,252 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Swap the potato

The recipe marks potato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, butter, pepper, cream, flour):

Leekfits better
Arrowrootfits better
Parsnipfits better
Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, butter, pepper, cream, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.