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Puree of Turnips

A smooth puree made from boiled turnips, rice, butter, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Puree of Turnips

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and peel the turnips.

  2. Cut the turnips into very small pieces.

Cook and serve

  1. Cook the turnips in water with the rice, butter, pepper, and salt until tender.

  2. Pass the mixture through a sieve.

  3. Mix with milk to taste 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Turnip + ricetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together824 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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 puree, giving its main flavor and body.
Rice
Its starch thickens the mixture and gives the puree a smoother, fuller body.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a silkier mouthfeel.
Milk
Adds creaminess and loosens the puree to a smooth consistency.

The step that matters

Cook the turnips until fully tender. Cooking softens the vegetable's cell walls and gelatinizes the rice starch. If the turnips are underdone, the puree stays grainy or lumpy even after sieving.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, butter, pepper. 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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