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Turnips with Sauce

Turnips cooked in a butter, flour, milk, and water sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Turnips with Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turnips

  1. Peel and cut the turnips into ½‑inch square pieces.

  2. Boil the turnips in salted water until tender, then drain without mashing.

Make the cream sauce

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour and butter to a cream.

  2. Add the salt, pepper, milk, and water to the mixture.

  3. Boil the milk and water, then pour over the butter and flour mixture.

  4. Cook the sauce over low heat until thickened.

Serve

  1. Serve the turnips with the sauce poured over them.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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 main body of the dish, becoming tender when boiled.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it heats with the liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and smooth texture to the sauce base.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid that gives the sauce its body and mild sweetness.

The step that matters

Cook the sauce over low heat until thickened. Flour thickens only as its starch heats in liquid and swells. Heating gently and stirring keeps the sauce smooth and prevents lumps or scorching on the base of the pan.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Turnipthe original

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