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Turnip Greens with Potatoes

A simple stew of turnip greens, potatoes, bacon, and milk simmered in water with salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and potato work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 562 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Turnip Greens with Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the greens

  1. Strip the leaves of the turnip greens from the stems.

  2. Wash them well.

  3. Cut them finely.

Cook

  1. Combine the turnip greens, water, bacon, and salt in a large pot.

  2. Bring to a boil.

  3. Boil until the greens are nearly done.

  4. Add the grated potato and milk.

  5. Let it boil for an additional 15 to 20 minutes, ensuring it is not watery but has some fluid.

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 + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  3. Turnip + milktop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together865 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

What each ingredient does

Turnip greens
Form the main body of the dish and cook down into a tender, leafy base.
Raw potato
Grated into the pot to thicken the liquid and add body to the greens.
Milk
Adds richness and softness to the cooking liquid.
Bacon
Releases fat and smoky flavor into the pot as it simmers with the greens.

The step that matters

Boil until the greens are nearly done, then add the potato and milk. Adding the grated potato and milk before the greens are tender can leave the liquid thin or curdled, and over-boiling can make the greens mushy. Timing the addition keeps the texture just right.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, milk):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, milk. 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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