Why it works: Turnip and artichoke match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 140 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓
Vegetable Pie
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Scald and blanch the broad beans.
Cut the young carrots, turnips, artichoke bottoms, mushrooms, onions, lettuces, parsley, celery, and add peas.
Make the filling
Make a nice stew with the vegetables and a little veal gravy; season with pepper and coarse sea salt.
Assemble and serve
Bake a pie crust over a dish, lining the edge with some extra crust.
Once baked, pour the stew into the dish and lay the crust over it.
For added richness, stir in a cup of cream before serving.
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.
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Turnip + artichoketop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together140 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Artichoke + lettucetop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together101 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
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Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together8,053 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
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Turnip + lettucetop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together526 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together8,002 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Broad beans
- Add tender body and a fresh, green flavour to the stew.
- Veal gravy
- Gives the stew savoury depth and moisture that binds the vegetables together.
- Cream
- Adds richness and a smoother, silkier mouthfeel to the filling.
Swap the onion
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, carrot, turnip, artichoke, mushroom, lettuce, parsley):
- Beetrootfits better
- Spinachfits better
- Shallotfits better
- Onionthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against beans, carrot, turnip, artichoke, mushroom, lettuce, parsley. 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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