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Stewed Parsnips

A simple stew of sliced parsnips cooked in butter, salt, and pepper until soft.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsnip and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,109 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Stewed Parsnips

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and scrape the parsnips, then slice them about ½ inch thick.

  2. Place the parsnips in a saucepan with just enough boiling water to barely cover them.

  3. Add the butter, and season with salt and pepper.

Stew

  1. Cover the saucepan and stew until the water has cooked away, stirring often to prevent burning.

  2. Cook until the parsnips are soft and have a creamy light straw color.

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

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

  2. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. 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
Form the dish itself; they soften and turn sweeter as they cook.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the parsnips a smooth, savory finish.

The step that matters

Stewing until the water has cooked away. Stirring often keeps the parsnips from sticking and scorching on the bottom of the pan once the water is gone. Cooking with a lid on first softens the slices evenly before the liquid evaporates.

Swap the parsnip

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Parsnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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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