Skip to main content
Main

To Boil Parsnips

A custard-like dish made from boiled parsnips, cream, butter, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Boil Parsnips

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the parsnips

  1. Wash the parsnips well.

  2. Boil the parsnips until soft.

  3. Remove the skin from the parsnips.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the parsnips in a bowl with a little salt.

  2. Add a little cream to the mixture.

  3. Add a lump of butter to the mixture.

  4. Transfer the mixture to a pan.

  5. Boil the mixture until it resembles a light custard pudding.

Serve

  1. Serve the custard on a plate.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Parsnip + buttertop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,051 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-pinene (pine, resin).

  3. Parsnip + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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 bulk of the dish, providing starch and sweetness once cooked soft and mashed.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, loosening the purée into a smoother, custard-like texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel in the finished custard.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture until it resembles a light custard pudding. Boiling reduces the added cream and evaporates excess water, thickening the purée. Stopping too early leaves it loose, while overcooking can make it stiff, dry, or prone to scorching on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the parsnip

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Onionfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Parsnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, butter. 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.

You might also like

Parsnip CakesParsnip Cakes12 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes