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Dessert

Turnips Glaces

Glazed turnips cooked with butter, sugar, broth, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 125 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Turnips Glaces

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turnips

  1. Peel the turnips and cut them into the shape of small pears.

  2. Boil the turnips in a saucepan with water and a little coarse sea salt for 10 minutes.

  3. Drain the turnips on a sieve until thoroughly drained.

Glaze and simmer

  1. Melt about 2 oz of butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the turnips and sprinkle with plenty of caster sugar.

  3. Toss the turnips over heat until they begin to color.

  4. Moisten with a small quantity of broth and season with salt, pepper, and a little powdered cinnamon.

  5. Boil gently until tender.

Serve

  1. Pile the turnips on a hot dish, pour the sauce over them, and serve.

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 + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together125 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Butter + cinnamontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 boiling and simmering.
Butter
Carries the heat and adds richness, helping the turnips brown lightly when tossed.
Caster sugar
Caramelizes on the turnips' surface, creating sweetness and a glossy golden glaze.
Broth
Adds savory liquid that combines with the butter and sugar to form the sauce.

The step that matters

Toss the turnips over heat until they begin to color. Sugar caramelizes when heated, so the turnips need enough heat and constant tossing to brown lightly without scorching. Thorough draining first keeps excess water from preventing browning.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, pepper, cinnamon. 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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