Name: Turnips a LA Creme
Ingredients: young turnips; cream; slices of toast or fried bread; capers

Why it works: Turnip and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 145 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Turnips a LA Creme

Ingredients

young turnips
cream
slices of toast or fried bread
capers

Directions

Cook the young turnips until tender.
Mash the turnips with plenty of cream.
Serve the mashed turnips in small portions on slices of toast or fried bread.
Top with a few capers.

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.

Turnip + caperstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together145 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Bread + caperstop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together307 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Turnip + breadtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together831 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Cream + breadtop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together5,789 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Turnip + creamtop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together797 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).