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Fried Parsnip Balls

Fried balls made from mashed parsnips, eggs, flour, butter, milk, and salt.

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 ↓

Fried Parsnip Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Boil the parsnips until very tender, then drain and mash them through a colander.

  2. Beat the eggs until light and mix them with the mashed parsnips, butter, flour, milk, and salt until thoroughly combined.

  3. Form the mixture into balls.

Fry

  1. Fry the balls in boiling hot butter, lard, or sweet drippings until golden brown.

  2. Alternatively, drop them into deep lard like fritters or fry on a griddle.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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
Provide the bulk and body of the balls once mashed.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set firm while frying.
Flour
Thickens the mashed mixture so the balls hold their shape.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the outside brown in the frying fat.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the mashed mixture.

The step that matters

Fry in very hot fat. If the fat is not boiling hot, the balls absorb oil or fat instead of searing, becoming greasy and pale. A hot surface sets the outside quickly so the balls keep their shape and turn golden brown.

Swap the parsnip

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Parsnipthe original

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