Why it works: Parsnip and cream work together. They rank in the top 25% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 325 recipes. Both carry octanal, which smells fat, soap. The science ↓
Parsnips Boiled, with Cream Sauce
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Scrape young parsnips and place in cold water to prevent discoloration; peel and cut old parsnips into quarters lengthwise.
Cook and serve
Boil the parsnips in a saucepan of boiling water until tender: 45 minutes for young parsnips, 1 hour and 15 minutes for old parsnips.
Drain the parsnips and arrange them on a heated dish with the heads all facing the same way.
Cover the parsnips with cream sauce or English drawn butter and serve with corned beef or boiled salt fish.
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.
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Parsnip + creamtop 25% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together325 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
- Parsnips
- Form the main body of the dish, becoming soft and sweet as they cook until tender.
- Cream sauce or english drawn butter
- Adds richness and moisture, coating the cooked parsnips with fat and flavour.
The step that matters
Boil until tender, timed by age of parsnip. Young and old parsnips need very different cooking times, 45 minutes versus 1 hour 15 minutes. Undercooking leaves the starchy flesh firm and hard to eat, while the cooked texture depends on the parsnip's age and size.
“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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