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Turnips, Mashed

Mashed turnips made by boiling, draining, sieving, and seasoning with butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and white pepper work together. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 275 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyraldehyde, which smells malty, chocolate. The science ↓

Turnips, Mashed

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the turnips

  1. Pare the turnips and place them in boiling salted water.

  2. Boil until tender, then drain in a colander and squeeze dry with the back of a large plate.

Mash and finish

  1. Rub the turnips through a sieve using a wooden spoon.

  2. Transfer to a saucepan, add butter, and season with pepper and salt if needed.

  3. Stir over heat until the butter is incorporated and the turnips are hot.

  4. Serve immediately.

  5. Optionally, add a little cream or milk for improved flavor and color.

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 + white peppertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together275 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  2. Turnip + buttertop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,100 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + white peppertop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Turnips
Form the bulk of the dish; cooking softens them and sieving turns them smooth.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the mash a silky texture and rounder flavor.
Cream or milk (in the method)
Optional addition that adds moisture and richness to the mash.

The step that matters

Squeezing the turnips dry. Turnips hold a lot of cooking water. Excess moisture makes the mash thin and loose, so draining and pressing them well helps keep it thick.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, butter. 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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