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Puree of Turnips

A smooth puree made from boiled turnips, milk, water, butter, flour, cream, sugar, salt, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 the turnips

  1. Pare and slice the turnips.

  2. Boil the turnips in equal parts milk and water until tender.

  3. Strain the turnips using a sieve and discard the liquid.

  4. Rub the turnips through the sieve until smooth.

Finish the puree

  1. In a stewpan, combine the pureed turnips with butter, flour, cream, sugar, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  2. Stir well and heat through 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

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

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

Turnips
Form the main body of the puree once cooked and rubbed smooth.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the puree.
Flour
Thickens the puree so it holds its body rather than running thin.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, softening the texture further.
Sugar
Adds a touch of sweetness that balances the earthy turnip flavour.

The step that matters

Rub the turnips through the sieve until smooth. Cooked turnip fibres stay coarse unless they are fully broken down by pressing. Any remaining fibre or lumps will show in the finished texture, so the pressing must be thorough.

Swap the turnip

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, flour, cream, sugar, 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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