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Turnips in White Sauce

Turnips in white sauce is a dish of boiled turnips served with a thickened cream or milk sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and arrowroot share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 64 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Turnips in White Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the turnips into quarters and shape them into balls or plums.

  2. Arrange the turnips in a saucepan and cover with veal broth.

Cook and serve

  1. Add salt and sugar, then boil until tender but unbroken.

  2. Drain the turnips and place them on a dish.

  3. Pour thick white sauce over the turnips 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. Turnip + arrowroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together64 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + arrowroottop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,073 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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 become tender when boiled.
Veal broth
Cooks the turnips and adds savory flavor to the dish.
Cream or milk
Forms the base of the white sauce, adding richness and a smooth texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the white sauce.
Arrowroot
Thickens the white sauce to a smooth consistency.

The step that matters

Boil until tender but unbroken. Turnips boiled too hard or too long will soften past the point of holding their shape and fall apart. Keeping the heat gentle and checking them as they cook helps them stay whole while becoming tender through the centre.

Swap the arrowroot

The recipe marks arrowroot as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, butter, cream, veal, sugar):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits about as well
  3. Arrowrootthe original
  4. Chivefits about as well

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