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Braised Onions, Carrots and Turnips

A simple braised dish of onions, carrots, and turnips cooked in butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Braised Onions, Carrots and Turnips

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and scrape the carrots and turnips, then cut them into small quarter lengths.

  2. Peel the small onions.

Cook

  1. Boil the vegetables in slightly salted water until half cooked.

  2. Drain well and heat a large lump of butter in an enamel saucepan.

  3. Add the vegetables to the hot butter, cover, and cook until heated through.

  4. Stir until the vegetables are cooked and browned, being careful not to burn 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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Carrot + buttertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,083 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the vegetables brown in the pan.
Carrots
Provide the main body and sweetness of the dish as they soften.
Turnips
Provide the main body of the dish and a mild, slightly peppery flavour.
Small onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they soften and brown in the butter.

The step that matters

Stir until browned without burning. Butter and sugars in the vegetables can scorch once the pan is very hot, turning bitter. Stirring gives even contact with the pan so the surfaces brown evenly while the centres finish cooking.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, 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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