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Bxcellent Turnip, or Artichoke Sauce Fob Boiled Meat

A sauce made from boiled turnips or Jerusalem artichokes, butter, flour, and cream, served over boiled meat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,874 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Bxcellent Turnip, or Artichoke Sauce Fob Boiled Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetable

  1. Pare, slice, and boil the turnips or artichokes until tender.

  2. Drain the water and pass them through a sieve.

Make the sauce

  1. In a clean saucepan, melt the butter and stir in the flour until smooth.

  2. Gradually add the cream (or milk and cream mixture) while stirring.

  3. Add the pureed turnips or artichokes and salt, mixing well until hot.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over boiled mutton, veal, lamb, or poultry.

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 + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 or jerusalem artichokes
Provide the bulk and body of the sauce once pureed, plus mild sweetness and flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour, and forms the base of the roux with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by cooking with the butter, giving it a smooth, body-rich texture.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel, and moisture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the melted butter until smooth. Cooking flour in fat forms a roux that thickens evenly; if lumps form or the flour is not cooked, the sauce stays pasty and lumpy.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, cream. 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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