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Turnips in a Haricot Blanc

Turnips cooked in consommé, butter, sugar, salt, and finished with cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Turnips in a Haricot Blanc

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Shape the turnips like barrels or cut them into dice.

  2. Boil the turnips and skim the water until nearly done.

Stew and serve

  1. Stew the turnips in light-colored consommé with butter, sugar, and salt.

  2. Cover the turnips with a round piece of paper to keep them white.

  3. Once done, drain the turnips on a sieve.

  4. Neatly place the turnips on a dish and pour cream sauce over them.

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. 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. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Turnips
Main vegetable; they soften during stewing and take on the flavor of the consommé.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the stewing liquid.
Sugar
Adds gentle sweetness that balances the savory consommé and the turnips' natural bitterness.
Cream sauce
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy finish over the stewed turnips.

The step that matters

Keeping the turnips white while stewing. Turnips can darken and discolor when exposed to heat and air during long cooking. Covering them with a paper lid limits contact with air and the surface of the liquid, helping the pale color hold. Stewing gently keeps them tender without breaking them apart.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Turnipthe original

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