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Turnips Stewed in Stock

Turnips stewed in butter and stock, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,252 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Turnips Stewed in Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the turnips and cut them into quarters.

  2. Shape the turnips nicely.

Cook

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan and brown the turnips in it.

  2. Season the turnips with salt and pepper.

  3. Add the stock and simmer for 30 minutes.

  4. Boil the stock quickly without a lid to reduce it.

  5. Arrange the turnips in a dish and pour the reduced stock 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. Turnip + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,252 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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, becoming tender as they simmer in the stock.
Butter
Browns the turnips in the pan, adding richness and a toasted flavour on the surface.
Stock
Cooks the turnips gently and, once reduced, concentrates into a flavourful sauce.

The step that matters

Boil the stock quickly without a lid to reduce it. Uncovered rapid boiling lets water evaporate, concentrating the flavour of the stock. A lid would trap steam and leave the liquid thin and watery.

Swap the turnip

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper. 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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