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Mashed Parsnips

Mashed parsnips with butter, pepper, sea salt, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Mashed Parsnips

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the parsnips until very tender.

  2. Mash the parsnips through a colander.

  3. Add a large lump of butter, pepper, coarse sea salt, and enough milk to make a puree.

  4. Serve in a mound on a hot dish or add more milk to serve as a puree with veal cutlets.

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

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

  3. Parsnip + milktop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together322 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

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

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

  5. Pepper + milktop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26,984 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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, mashing into a soft, smooth puree.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the puree a smooth, silky mouthfeel.
Milk
Adds moisture so the mashed parsnips loosen into a smooth puree.

Swap the parsnip

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, 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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