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Creamed Parsnips

Creamed parsnips are parsnips simmered in butter, pepper, salt, parsley, and a cream or milk sauce thickened with flour.

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 the parsnips

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

Make the sauce

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

  2. Shake the mixture until it boils.

  3. Dish the parsnips and add cream or milk mixed with flour to the sauce.

Finish

  1. Boil once more and pour the sauce 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
Form the main body of the dish and provide its sweet, earthy flavour.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the sauce.
Cream or milk
Supplies moisture and creaminess, forming the base of the sauce.
All-purpose flour
Starch thickens the cream sauce as it heats, giving it body.

The step that matters

Boil once more and pour the sauce over the parsnips.. Flour thickens the sauce only when its starch heats to boiling and swells. Bringing the sauce fully to a boil again thickens it properly and cooks out the raw flour taste.

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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