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Creamed Parsnips

Creamed parsnips are boiled parsnips topped with a butter, pepper, salt, and cream or milk sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Creamed Parsnips

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the parsnips

  1. Boil the parsnips until tender, then scrape and slice them lengthwise.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and add pepper and salt.

  2. Add the parsnips to the saucepan and shake until very hot.

  3. In a separate bowl, mix the cream (or milk) with the flour.

  4. Boil the cream mixture briskly, then pour it over the sliced parsnips.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 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
Form the main body of the dish, providing the bulk and sweet, earthy flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and giving the parsnips a smooth coating.
Cream or milk
Provides liquid and creaminess, forming the base of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the cream mixture when it is boiled, giving the sauce body.

The step that matters

Boil the cream mixture briskly. Flour starch only thickens properly when it reaches a full boil and is stirred, so a gentle heat leaves the sauce thin and possibly tasting of raw flour.

Swap the parsnip

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, cream, flour. 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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