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Stewed Parsnips

A stew of parsnips cooked with butter, flour, milk, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Stewed Parsnips

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and wash the parsnips.

  2. Place them in a stew pan and cover with cold water.

  3. Boil the parsnips for one hour.

Finish the stew

  1. In a separate bowl, mix the butter and flour together.

  2. Stir the butter-flour mixture into the parsnips.

  3. Add the milk, salt, and pepper.

  4. Let the mixture simmer slowly for 30 minutes.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Parsnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together669 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Form the main body of the dish and provide its sweet, starchy flavor and soft texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor and giving the stew a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the liquid as it heats, giving the stew body and a creamy consistency.
Milk
Adds moisture and creaminess, and its proteins and sugars contribute mild sweetness and browning.

The step that matters

Stirring the butter-flour mixture into the parsnips. Flour clumps if dropped in dry or added too quickly, leaving lumps. Mixing it with butter first and stirring it through the hot liquid spreads the starch so it thickens evenly.

Swap the parsnip

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Parsnipthe original

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

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