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Excellent Turnip, or Artichoke Sauce for Boiled Meat

A creamy sauce made from boiled turnips (or artichokes) blended with butter, flour, and cream, served over boiled meats.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,874 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Excellent Turnip, or Artichoke Sauce for Boiled Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turnips

  1. Peel, slice, and boil the turnips until tender.

  2. Press the water from the turnips and pass them through a sieve.

Make the sauce

  1. In a clean saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the flour until smooth, then gradually add the cream while stirring.

  3. Add the turnips and salt, mixing well until hot.

  4. For added flavor, boil a little cayenne tied in muslin in the milk before mixing.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over boiled meat such as mutton, veal, lamb, or poultry.

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 + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Turnip + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,252 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Turnips
Form the body of the sauce, giving it bulk and a mild, sweet flavor once cooked and sieved.
Butter
Provides fat that carries flavor and helps form the smooth base with the flour.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the butter and cream into a smooth roux that gives the sauce body.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky texture, giving the sauce its smooth, pourable consistency.

The step that matters

Stir the flour and cream smoothly. Adding cream too quickly or without constant stirring lets the flour clump, leaving lumps. Gradual addition while stirring lets starch disperse evenly so the sauce thickens smoothly.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, cream, pepper. 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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