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Turnips with Gravy Stock

Turnips simmered with butter, flour, sugar, salt, and stock to make a savory gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Turnips with Gravy Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash, peel, and cut the turnips into four or six pieces.

  2. Put the turnips into a saucepan with boiling water for five minutes.

  3. Drain the turnips in a colander.

Brown the turnips

  1. Return the turnips to the saucepan with the butter and place the saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Occasionally shake the turnips until they are lightly browned.

  3. Add the flour and pounded loaf sugar and mix thoroughly with a wooden spoon.

  4. Add salt and the stock.

Simmer and serve

  1. Simmer slowly for 25 minutes with the lid on.

  2. Remove the lid and place the saucepan over high heat for five minutes.

  3. Transfer the turnips to a hot dish without breaking.

  4. Serve with the sauce.

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. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Turnip + buttertop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,100 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

Turnips
Form the main body of the dish and soften into tender pieces during simmering.
Butter
Adds fat that helps the turnips take on light browning and enriches the flavour.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a gravy as it cooks.
Pounded loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the turnips brown in the butter.
Stock
Provides the liquid base of the gravy and carries savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Lightly browning the turnips in butter. Browning relies on the Maillard reaction, which needs a dry surface and steady heat. Shaking the pieces gently exposes all sides evenly, so they colour rather than steam or scorch.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Turnipthe original

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