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Creamed Parsnips

Creamed parsnips are boiled parsnips topped with a butter, pepper, salt, parsley, and cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Creamed Parsnips

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the parsnips

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

Make the sauce

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

  2. Stir the mixture until it boils.

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

Serve

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

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

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and a rounded, savory flavor to the sauce base.
Cream or milk
Provides liquid and creaminess, giving the sauce a smooth, soft texture.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch cooks in the hot liquid.

The step that matters

Boil the sauce once. Flour thickens the cream sauce only once it reaches a boil, so stir it smooth. Dairy sauces can separate or turn grainy if boiled hard or for long, so one brief boil is enough.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Turmericfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, 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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