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Creamed Parsnips

Creamed parsnips are boiled parsnips topped with a cream and flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Creamed Parsnips

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and slice the parsnips.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the parsnips until tender.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix the cream or milk with the flour.

  3. Add the cream mixture to the boiling parsnips.

  4. Boil once more, then serve the parsnips with the sauce poured over them.

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. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  3. Parsnip + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together325 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

Parsnips
Form the main body of the dish and provide its sweet, starchy flavor and soft texture.
Cream or milk
Adds moisture and richness, forming the creamy sauce that coats the parsnips.
Flour
Thickens the cream mixture so the sauce clings to the parsnips instead of running off.

The step that matters

Add the cream mixture to the boiling parsnips. Flour must be fully mixed into the cream before it goes in, or it will form lumps. Keep the liquid boiling while stirring so the starch swells and thickens the sauce evenly.

Swap the parsnip

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Parsnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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