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Turnip Salad

A salad of boiled turnips dressed with a vinaigrette of vinegar, sugar, eggs, butter, and optional mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 290 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Turnip Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turnips

  1. Pare and cut the turnips using a slaw cutter.

  2. Boil the turnips in salted water until tender.

Make the dressing

  1. In a saucepan, combine vinegar, sugar, eggs, butter, and mustard (if using).

  2. Heat the dressing on the stove until it thickens.

Combine and serve

  1. Pour the dressing over the turnips.

  2. Let the mixture boil for 1-2 minutes.

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 + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Turnips
Form the salad's main body and, once boiled until tender, its soft texture.
Eggs
Thicken the dressing as they cook, giving it a smooth, creamy body.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sugar and cuts the richness of the dressing.
Sugar
Sweetens the dressing to offset the vinegar's tartness.
Butter
Adds fat for richer flavour and a silkier dressing texture.

The step that matters

Heating the dressing until it thickens. Egg proteins thicken when heated gently, but if the dressing gets too hot it can curdle or scramble. Heat it slowly over low, steady heat while stirring, and stop once it coats a spoon.

Swap the mustard

The recipe marks mustard as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, vinegar, sugar, egg, butter):

  1. Leekfits about as well
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Chivefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, vinegar, sugar, egg, butter. 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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