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Creamed Parsnips

Creamed parsnips are boiled parsnips sautéed with butter, salt, pepper, parsley, and a cream‑flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Creamed Parsnips

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the parsnips until tender.

  2. Scrape and slice the parsnips lengthwise.

Make the creamed parsnips

  1. In a pan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the parsnips, salt, pepper, and parsley.

  3. Shake the pan until the mixture boils.

  4. In a bowl, mix the cream with the flour.

  5. Add the mixture to the sauce.

  6. Boil the mixture once.

  7. Pour it over the 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 + 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 + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together669 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

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

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, giving it a tender, soft texture when boiled.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour through the dish.
Cream
Makes the sauce rich and smooth, adding moisture and body.
Flour
Thickens the cream into a sauce as it heats and boils.

The step that matters

Adding the cream and flour mixture. Flour mixed into cream must be fully blended before it goes in, otherwise it clumps. Boiling it once after adding thickens the sauce by swelling the starch granules, so it should be heated just enough to set without scorching.

Swap the parsnip

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

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

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