Skip to main content
Main

Buttered Parsnips

A boiled parsnip dish served with a butter, pepper, salt, and parsley sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsnip and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 484 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Buttered Parsnips

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the parsnips until tender.

  2. Scrape off the skin.

  3. Slice the parsnips lengthwise into ¼-inch thick pieces.

Make and serve

  1. In a saucepan, combine the parsnips with melted butter, pepper, salt, and chopped parsley.

  2. Heat over medium until it boils.

  3. Transfer the parsnips to a dish, then pour the sauce over them.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together484 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

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

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, with a tender, sweet flesh once boiled.
Melted butter
Adds richness and moisture, coating the parsnips and carrying flavour through the sauce.
Chopped parsley
Adds fresh, herbal aroma that brightens the buttery sauce.

The step that matters

Boil the parsnips until tender. Parsnips must be fully softened before slicing and saucing; undercooked roots stay firm and fibrous, and the butter cannot soften them afterward.

Swap the parsnip

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, parsley. 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.

You might also like

Parsnip CakesParsnip Cakes12 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes