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Creamed Parsnips

A creamy sauce of butter, cream, and flour coats boiled parsnips.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Creamed Parsnips

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the parsnips

  1. Boil tender parsnips.

  2. Scrape and slice the boiled parsnips lengthwise.

Make the sauce

  1. In a pan, melt the butter over medium heat and add salt, pepper, and minced parsley.

  2. Shake the pan until the mixture boils.

  3. Remove the parsnips and add cream or milk mixed with a little flour to the pan.

  4. Boil the sauce once.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the parsnips.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

Parsnips (in the method)
Form the main body of the dish, providing a soft, sweet, earthy vegetable base.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour into the sauce and coating the vegetables.
Cream or milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it a smooth, creamy texture.
Flour
Thickens the cream or milk into a smooth sauce when it is boiled.

The step that matters

Boil the sauce once. Flour thickens cream or milk as its starch swells with heat. Letting the sauce come to a boil ensures the flour is cooked and the sauce thickens smoothly rather than tasting raw or floury.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Turmericfits about as well

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