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Parsnips, Fried

Fried parsnips boiled until tender, then browned in butter and lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsnip and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 25% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,051 recipes. Both carry beta-pinene, which smells pine, resin. The science ↓

Parsnips, Fried

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scrape and wash the parsnips, then split them lengthwise in halves.

  2. Boil the parsnips in salted water for about 2 hours, or until very tender.

  3. Drain the parsnips and set aside.

Fry and serve

  1. In a large frying pan, heat the butter and lard until hot.

  2. Place the parsnips cut side down in the pan and brown them on both sides.

  3. Keep the parsnips in the frying pan until ready to serve.

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 + 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
Provide the main body of the dish, becoming soft inside after boiling and developing a browned surface when fried.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour, and helps the parsnip surfaces brown in the hot pan.
Lard
Fat that tolerates high heat, helping the parsnips brown and crisp on the outside.

The step that matters

Brown the parsnips cut side down. Parsnips are already soft from boiling, so the goal in the pan is surface browning only. The fat must be hot before they go in, or they will absorb grease and steam instead of forming a golden crust through the Maillard reaction.

“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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