Why it works: Turnip and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,585 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓
Turnip Pie
Ingredients
Directions
Season the mutton chops with salt and pepper.
Cut the turnips into small dice and place them on the steaks.
Reserve the ends of the neck-bones to lay over the turnips.
Add two or three good spoonfuls of milk.
Optionally, add sliced onion.
Cover with a crust.
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 + oniontop 5% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together7,585 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Pepper + turniptop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together5,252 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together68,474 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together5,442 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Mutton + oniontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together4,531 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
Swap the turnip
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, pepper, milk, onion):
- Potatofits better
- Capsicumfits better
- Carrotfits better
- Turnipthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, pepper, milk, onion. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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