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Vegetable Scoops

A dish of diced carrots, turnips, cauliflower, and French beans tossed in a white sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and cauliflower match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 286 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Vegetable Scoops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Cut the carrots and turnips into ¼‑inch square pieces or shapes like olives or filberts.

  2. Divide the cauliflower and French beans into small, neat pieces.

  3. Cook the vegetables separately in plenty of water with a little salt until tender.

  4. Drain and dry the vegetables.

Combine and serve

  1. In a saucepan, combine the vegetables with enough white sauce to moisten them.

  2. Toss the vegetables lightly in the sauce without breaking them.

  3. Heat until the vegetables are hot 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. Turnip + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together286 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Cauliflower + beanstop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

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

  4. Turnip + beanstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together400 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + beanstop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,443 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Carrots
Provide bulk, colour and a firm texture that holds its shape in the sauce.
Turnips
Add firm body and a mild, slightly peppery sweetness once cooked.
Cauliflower
Adds bulk and a tender texture that absorbs the white sauce well.
French beans
Add crisp-tender texture and fresh green colour to the mixture.
White sauce
Moistens the vegetables and binds them together with a creamy, rich coating.

The step that matters

Toss the vegetables lightly in the sauce without breaking them. Cooked vegetables are soft and fragile, so rough stirring crushes their surfaces and releases starch and water, making the dish mushy and watery. Gentle folding keeps the pieces intact and the sauce evenly distributed.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, cauliflower, beans, sauce):

  1. Beetrootfits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, cauliflower, beans, sauce. 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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