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Turnip-tops

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and spinach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 320 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Turnip-tops

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil fresh turnip-tops in water for about 20 minutes until tender.

  2. Finely chop the boiled turnip-tops with a knife and fork.

  3. If desired, rub through a wire sieve and mix with a little spinach extract for color.

  4. Serve with hard-boiled eggs 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. Turnip + spinachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together320 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Spinach + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,323 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Turnip + eggtop 36% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,077 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

Swap the spinach

The recipe marks spinach as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, egg):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Spinachthe original

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

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