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Stewed Parsnips

A simple dish of parsnips simmered with butter, flour, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsnip and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 669 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Stewed Parsnips

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scrape and slice the parsnips lengthwise, then soak them in cold water for 30 minutes.

  2. Cook the parsnips in boiling water with a little salt until tender.

Make the stew

  1. Drain off half the water.

  2. Stir in the butter and flour mixture.

  3. Season with pepper and salt to taste.

  4. Stew gently for 5 minutes.

Serve

  1. Pour into a deep, covered dish.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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; cooking softens their starches into a tender, mildly sweet base.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel in the finished stew.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a light sauce as its starch swells when heated.

The step that matters

Stir in the butter and flour mixture. Flour clumps if it is not evenly dispersed in the hot liquid. Its starch thickens the stew smoothly only once it is distributed and heated through.

Swap the parsnip

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, 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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