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Turnip Sauce

A creamy sauce made from turnips or Jerusalem artichokes, butter, flour, cream, and optional cayenne pepper.

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 ↓

Turnip Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Peel and chop the turnips or artichokes.

  2. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  3. Add the flour and stir to form a roux.

  4. Gradually whisk in the cream or milk until smooth.

  5. Add the chopped turnips or artichokes and salt.

  6. Heat the mixture until very hot, stirring frequently.

  7. If using, boil the cayenne in the milk before adding.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over boiled 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 or jerusalem artichokes
Their starch and fibre thicken the sauce and give it body and a mild sweetness.
Butter
Provides fat and rich flavour, and helps form the roux with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as a roux, giving it a smooth, stable texture.
Cream
Adds richness, fat and a smooth, velvety mouthfeel to the sauce.

The step that matters

Whisking in the cream or milk. Adding liquid too fast to the roux can leave lumps. Adding it gradually while whisking lets the starch disperse evenly so the sauce turns smooth.

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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