Name: Radishes, Steamed or Boiled
Ingredients: average-sized turnip radishes; white sauce or melted butter

Why it works: Turnip and radish share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Radishes, Steamed or Boiled

Ingredients

average-sized turnip radishes
white sauce or melted butter

Directions

Cook the radishes like turnips for about 20 minutes.
Serve with white sauce or melted butter.
Pair with boiled meat or serve separately.

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.

Turnip + radishtop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together35 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Turnip + saucetop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together943 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Radish + saucetop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together108 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).