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Turnips in White Sauce

Turnips simmered in a butter and white sauce with optional sugar and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Turnips in White Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the turnips

  1. Peel and quarter the turnips, then place them in boiling salted water.

  2. Boil until tender, then drain in a colander and press with a plate to remove excess water.

  3. Rub the turnips through the colander into a clean saucepan.

Finish and serve

  1. Add butter, white pepper or cayenne, and salt, stirring over heat until well mixed and hot.

  2. For improved flavor and color, stir in a little cream or milk before serving.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Sauce + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Turnips
Form the bulk of the dish; pressing and sieving them gives a smooth, purée-like texture.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the puréed turnips.
White sauce
Supplies body and creaminess, binding the puréed turnips together.

The step that matters

Pressing out the excess water. Turnips hold a lot of water after boiling. Pressing them well and draining before sieving keeps the purée thick, so it does not turn thin and watery when mixed with the white sauce.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, butter, sauce, sugar, cream. 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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