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Sauce

Excellent Turnip, or Artichoke Sauce for Boiled Meat

A creamy 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) · 6 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 ↓

Excellent Turnip, or Artichoke Sauce for Boiled Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turnips

  1. Slice and boil the turnips or artichokes until tender.

  2. Drain and press out the water, then pass through a sieve.

Make the sauce

  1. In a clean saucepan, melt the butter over low heat.

  2. Stir in the flour until smooth, then gradually add the cream or milk.

  3. Heat the mixture until it boils, stirring constantly.

  4. Add the pureed turnips or artichokes and salt, mixing well.

  5. Heat until hot, then pour 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. Turnip + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,252 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 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
Form the body of the sauce once pureed, giving it thickness and a mild sweet flavour.
Butter
Provides fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel, and forms the base for the roux.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by swelling in the hot liquid, giving it a smooth, coating body.
Cream or milk
Adds moisture and richness, making the sauce creamy and pourable.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour and liquid as it boils. Flour added to fat and then liquid can clump if not stirred. Constant stirring while the mixture heats keeps it smooth and lets the starch thicken evenly as it comes to a boil.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Turnipthe original

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