Skip to main content
Main

Parsnip with Cream Sauce

A parsnip dish simmered in a butter‑flour cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsnip and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 669 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Parsnip with Cream Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the parsnip

  1. Scrape and wash the parsnip without soaking it.

  2. Cover the parsnip with boiling water and cook until tender, about 20 to 30 minutes.

  3. Cut the parsnip into slices half an inch thick.

  4. If the parsnip has a hard core, cut it out of each slice and discard.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and stir in the flour to form a cream.

  2. Add the boiling water to the cream mixture, stirring well.

  3. Season the sauce with salt and pepper, and let it boil for 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve the parsnip slices in a vegetable dish, topped with the cream sauce.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

Parsnip
Provides the main vegetable body and sweet, earthy flavour once cooked until tender.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce and carries flavour through the cream.
Flour
Thickens the butter and water mixture into a smooth, cohesive sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the butter and adding the boiling water. Flour must be cooked briefly in the melted butter and the liquid added gradually while stirring well. This keeps the sauce smooth and prevents lumps from forming as the starch hydrates and thickens.

Swap the parsnip

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

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

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