Why it works: Turnip and sauce work together. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 943 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓
Turnip Sauce
Ingredients
Directions
Make the turnip purée
Peel the turnips and simmer them in a little water until tender and the liquid is reduced.
Rub the cooked turnips through a sieve.
Add a little béchamel sauce to the sieved turnips.
Finish the sauce
Cut additional turnips into shapes like haricot and simmer them until tender.
Combine the shaped turnips with the sieved turnips.
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 + saucetop 20% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together943 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Turnips
- Provide the main body and flavour of the sauce once cooked and sieved.
- Béchamel sauce
- Adds richness and a smoother, creamier texture to the sieved turnip.
The step that matters
Reducing the cooking liquid. Simmering until the liquid is reduced concentrates the turnip flavour and leaves little excess water, so the purée does not turn thin when sieved and combined.
“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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