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Puree of Turnips, with Cream, French Style

A creamy turnip puree made with butter, cream, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Puree of Turnips, with Cream, French Style

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turnips

  1. Peel and slice the turnips, then parboil them until nearly tender.

  2. Drain the turnips and place them in a saucepan with butter.

  3. Season with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and sugar, then cover and cook until moisture is nearly reduced.

Make the puree

  1. Add the cream sauce and mix well, then rub through a fine sieve.

  2. Put the puree in a flat saucepan and reduce to the proper consistency while slowly adding the cream.

  3. Before serving, add a piece of butter.

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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Turnip + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together377 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  5. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Young white turnips
Form the main body of the puree once cooked and sieved.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the puree.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, loosening the puree to a smooth consistency.
Cream sauce
Adds extra richness and body to the puree before sieving.

The step that matters

Reduce the puree while adding the cream. Adding cream slowly while reducing lets the liquid thicken gradually. Adding it too fast or over-reducing can leave the puree either watery or heavy, so the consistency is hard to correct later.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, nutmeg, sugar, cream, 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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