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Parsnip Soup

A soup made from boiled parsnip, milk, flour, salt, pepper, and sugar, served with fried bread.

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 Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the parsnip into small pieces.

  2. Boil the parsnip until tender.

  3. Rub the parsnip through a sieve.

Make the soup

  1. Return the parsnip to the boiling water and add enough water to make 1 quart.

  2. Mix the flour in the milk and stir into the boiling parsnip.

  3. Add salt, pepper, and sugar to taste.

  4. Serve with fried bread.

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. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 main body of the soup and gives it its flavour and thickness when sieved.
Flour
Thickens the soup by swelling in the hot liquid, giving it body.
Milk
Adds richness and softness, rounding out the texture of the soup.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour and milk into the boiling parsnip. Flour added to hot liquid clumps if not mixed in smoothly first. Mixing it into the milk beforehand and stirring it in gives an even, smooth thickening.

Swap the parsnip

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits about as well
  4. Parsnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, pepper, sugar, bread. 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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