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Parsnip Patties

Parsnip patties are fried cakes made from boiled parsnip, butter, flour, egg yolk, and cracker crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 Patties

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the parsnip

  1. Wash and boil the parsnip in salted water until very tender.

  2. Scrape off the skin and mash the parsnip while hot until you have 1 cup.

Shape the patties

  1. Add butter, flour, and salt to the mashed parsnip and stir well.

  2. Mix in the egg yolk and shape the mixture into four flat cakes.

  3. If the mixture sticks, wet your hands with cold water to prevent sticking.

  4. Coat the cakes in powdered cracker crumbs.

Fry

  1. Fry the cakes in hot butter until golden brown, using 1 teaspoon of butter for each side.

  2. Do not cook longer than necessary to avoid hardening the egg.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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
Forms the bulk of the patties and gives them their body and sweet flavour.
Egg yolk
Binds the mashed parsnip so the cakes hold their shape.
Flour
Absorbs moisture and helps the mixture hold together while shaping.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the cakes brown and crisp when fried.
Powdered cracker crumbs
Form a dry coating that browns and gives the outside a crisp texture.

The step that matters

Fry only until golden brown. Egg proteins set and toughen when overheated, so long cooking hardens the egg-bound patties and dries them out. Cook just until golden.

Swap the parsnip

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Parsnipthe original

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