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Turnips in White Sauce. Navets a LA Sauce Blanche.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Turnips in White Sauce. Navets a LA Sauce Blanche.

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cut the turnips into any desired shape.

  2. Place them in a pot with water, salt, and a little butter.

  3. Cook until tender, then drain.

  4. Prepare a thickened white sauce and add the turnips.

  5. Let them simmer briefly, then season with nutmeg and pepper.

  6. Serve with mustard if desired.

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. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Turnip + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together377 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Turnipthe original

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

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