Name: Parsnips with Cream Sauce
Ingredients: parsnips; cream sauce (prepared according to asparagus recipe)

Why it works: Parsnip and asparagus share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 36 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Parsnips with Cream Sauce

Ingredients

parsnips
cream sauce (prepared according to asparagus recipe)

Directions

Bake the parsnips until tender.
Slice the baked parsnips.
Pour the cream sauce over the sliced parsnips.
Let everything boil together once, then serve.

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.

Parsnip + asparagustop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together36 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,787 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Sauce + asparagustop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together573 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Cream + asparagustop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together838 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Parsnip + saucetop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together156 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).