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Radishes

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and radish share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Radishes

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Choose small, fresh radishes and wash them in cold water with a vegetable brush.

  2. Trim the green tops and roots evenly, ensuring no grit remains.

  3. Wrap the cleaned radishes in a cloth and shake lightly.

  4. Arrange them in circles on a dish with a border of watercress or small salad.

  5. To serve boiled radishes, wash and trim them, then boil in salted water until tender, about 30 minutes.

  6. Drain and serve covered with butter sauce.

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 + radishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together35 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Turnip + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Radish + buttertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together180 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Swap the radish

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Radishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, butter, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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