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Turnip Salad

A salad of boiled turnips, spring onions, boiled potatoes, lettuce, dressed with salad dressing or remoulade sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 526 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Turnip Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the turnips for 30 minutes or until soft, then let them cool completely.

  2. Shred the spring onions finely.

  3. Slice the boiled potatoes.

  4. Break the lettuce into pieces.

Assemble and dress

  1. Arrange the turnips, onions, potatoes, and lettuce in a bowl.

  2. Pour the salad dressing or remoulade sauce over the salad.

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 + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together526 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Potato + lettucetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together322 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Turnip + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Turnips
Form the bulk of the salad and give a soft, tender texture once boiled.
Spring onions
Add sharp, fresh aroma and a bit of bite that cuts through the richer flavours.
Potatoes
Add a starchy, soft body that holds the salad together and absorbs dressing.
Lettuce
Adds crisp, fresh texture and contrast to the soft cooked vegetables.

The step that matters

Cool the turnips completely before assembling. Warm turnips and potatoes can wilt the lettuce and make the dressing run thin and watery. Fully cooled vegetables keep the salad crisp in parts and the dressing clinging to the pieces.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Beetrootfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, onion, lettuce, 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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