Name: Parsnip Stew
Ingredients: ½ pound fat and lean pork; 3 parsnips, thinly sliced; 1 onion, chopped; 1 quart bowl of potatoes, cut into small pieces; salt, to taste; pepper, to taste; celery salt, to taste

Why it works: Parsnip and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 561 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Parsnip Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the pork in plenty of water for 2 hours.
Add the sliced parsnips and chopped onion to the boiling pork and simmer for 1 hour.
Add the small pieces of cooked potatoes and season with salt, pepper, and celery salt.

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 + celerytop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together561 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together16,012 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pork + potatotop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,668 recipes

Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).
Parsnip + potatotop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together353 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Pork: Provides meat and fat that flavour the broth during long simmering.
Parsnips: Add body, mild sweetness and starchy texture as they soften in the stew.
Onion: Adds savoury aroma and depth to the broth as it cooks.
Potatoes: Thicken the stew slightly through starch release and add substance.

Swap the parsnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, onion, potato, pepper, celery):

Carrotfits better
Capsicumfits better
Mustardfits better
Parsnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, onion, potato, pepper, celery. 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.