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To Boil Turnips and Mash Them

A boiled and mashed turnip dish flavored with butter, 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 ↓

To Boil Turnips and Mash Them

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Fill a saucepan with 2 quarts of warm water and add 2 teaspoons of coarse sea salt, then bring to a boil.

  2. Wash the turnips in cold water and peel them thickly with a sharp knife.

  3. If the turnips are very large, cut them into quarters.

Cook and drain

  1. Once the water is boiling, add the turnips and boil gently until tender.

  2. Check tenderness with a fork.

  3. Drain the turnips in a colander until very dry.

  4. For mashed turnips, squeeze them dry in the colander using a plate.

Mash and serve

  1. Rub the drained turnips through the colander with a wooden spoon into a saucepan.

  2. Add 1 ounce of butter and pepper to taste, then heat the saucepan on the stove, stirring until the butter is mixed and the turnips are warmed through.

  3. Serve on a hot dish.

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 soft and mashable when boiled until tender.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the mash a smooth texture and mellow flavour.

The step that matters

Drain and squeeze the turnips until very dry. Excess water dilutes the mash and makes it loose and watery. Thorough draining and squeezing concentrate the turnip flavour and give a thicker, creamier texture.

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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