Skip to main content
Side

Parsnips, Butter and Pepper

A side dish of boiled parsnip slices fried in butter and seasoned with pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsnip and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,109 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Parsnips, Butter and Pepper

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the parsnips until tender.

  2. Skin the parsnips and cut them into ¼-inch thick slices lengthwise.

Fry

  1. Fry the slices in boiling butter until one side is brown.

  2. Turn the slices over to brown the other side.

Serve

  1. Place them on a dish and sprinkle with pepper.

  2. Serve with fried or roast meat.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Parsnips
Cooked to tenderness first, then their natural sugars brown in the butter for a sweet, caramelized surface.
Butter
Conducts heat to the slices and browns, adding a nutty flavor and richness to the surface.

The step that matters

Fry in boiling butter until brown. Butter's milk solids and the parsnips' sugars brown on contact with hot fat. If the heat is too high the butter burns before the slices color, so the pan must be hot enough to brown without scorching.

Swap the parsnip

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Parsnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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 CroquettesParsnip Croquettes12 recipesEggplant CakesEggplant Cakes34 recipesEscalloped Tomatoes (Scalloped Tomatoes)Escalloped Tomatoes (Scalloped Tomatoes)25 recipesOnion PuddingOnion Pudding9 recipes