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Scalloped Turnips

A baked dish of sliced turnips layered with sauce, Parmesan, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Scalloped Turnips

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the turnips

  1. Slice the turnips.

  2. Stew the sliced turnips in water with a little butter and salt until tender.

  3. Remove excess liquid and reserve it for the sauce.

Make the sauce

  1. In a separate pan, combine the reserved liquid with flour and the remaining butter to make the sauce.

Assemble and bake

  1. Butter a baking dish.

  2. Layer the sliced turnips, dusting each layer with pepper and some sauce.

  3. Continue layering until all turnips are used.

  4. Top the final layer with grated Parmesan cheese and small flakes of butter.

  5. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until light brown.

  6. Serve in the same 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + parmesan cheesetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Turnip + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,252 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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
Form the bulk of the dish, becoming tender when stewed and layered.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the top brown during baking.
Flour
Thickens the reserved cooking liquid into a sauce that binds the layers.
Grated parmesan cheese
Melts and browns on the top layer, adding savoury flavour and a golden crust.

The step that matters

Remove excess liquid before making the sauce. Excess water dilutes the sauce and keeps it thin, so the layers can turn soggy. Reserving the liquid and thickening it with flour gives a sauce that clings to the turnips.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, parmesan cheese, bread. 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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