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To Boil Turnips

Turnips boiled and glazed with stock, sugar, butter, pepper, salt, and cream or milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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To Boil Turnips

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Boil Turnips

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and brush the turnips in cold water.

  2. Pare away the thick skin, cutting down until a line can be seen.

  3. Soak the turnips in cold water until ready to cook.

  4. If large, cut them in halves and place in boiling water.

Boil and glaze

  1. Cover and boil until tender, about 30 minutes for young turnips or 1 hour for fully-grown ones.

  2. Drain and place in a saucepan with stock and sugar.

  3. Boil quickly until the sauce reduces to a glaze.

  4. Shake the pan to coat the turnips with the glaze and serve.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Turnips
Form the main body of the dish and absorb the glaze as they cook.
Stock
Provides the liquid that reduces into a savoury glaze.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the glaze brown and thicken as it reduces.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the finished glaze.

The step that matters

Boil quickly until the sauce reduces to a glaze. Rapid boiling evaporates water and concentrates the stock and sugar into a sticky glaze. If the heat is too low or the pan is left uncovered too briefly, the sauce stays thin and does not coat the turnips.

Swap the turnip

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

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

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