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Creamed Parsnips

Creamed parsnips are boiled parsnips tossed in a butter, parsley, cream, and flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsnip and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 484 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Creamed Parsnips

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the parsnips until tender, then scrape and slice them lengthwise.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat, then add salt, pepper, and minced parsley.

  2. Once the mixture boils, add the parsnips.

  3. In a small bowl, mix the cream or milk with the flour, then add to the saucepan.

  4. Boil the mixture once more, then pour it over the parsnips.

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. Parsnip + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together484 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Parsnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together669 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Parsnip + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,109 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Parsnips
Provide the main vegetable body and sweet, earthy flavor of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the sauce.
Cream or milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding creaminess and moisture.
Flour
Thickens the cream or milk into a creamy sauce that coats the parsnips.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture once more after adding the flour. Flour thickens only when the liquid reaches a boil and the starch swells. Boiling briefly after adding the cream-flour mixture gives the sauce its body; without it the sauce stays thin and may taste raw.

Swap the parsnip

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

  1. Shallotfits about as well
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Parsnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, parsley, cream, flour. 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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