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Creamed Turnips

Creamed Turnips is a dish of boiled turnips served with a cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Creamed Turnips

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turnips

  1. Wash, peel, and cut the turnips into half‑inch blocks.

  2. Place the turnips in a saucepan and add salt and sugar.

Cook and finish

  1. Cover with boiling water and cook gently for about 20 minutes until tender.

  2. Drain thoroughly, being careful not to break the pieces.

  3. For each cup of turnips, prepare 1 cup of Cream Sauce, add the turnips, and reheat.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Turnip + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Turnip + creamtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together797 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

Firm turnips
Form the main body of the dish, softening into tender pieces when simmered.
Cream sauce
Adds richness and moisture, coating the turnips as they reheat.

The step that matters

Drain thoroughly, being careful not to break the pieces. Excess water dilutes the cream sauce and makes it thin, while cooked turnip pieces are fragile and break easily when handled, so drain gently and completely before combining.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, cream, sauce):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream, sauce. 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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