Skip to main content
Main

Parsnip Balls

A dish of boiled parsnip mixture formed into balls and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Parsnip Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the parsnips

  1. Boil the parsnips in salted water until very tender.

  2. Mash the parsnips and season with salt, pepper, and butter.

Shape and fry

  1. Add flour and well-beaten eggs to the mixture.

  2. Mold the mixture into small balls.

  3. Fry the balls in butter until golden brown.

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 + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 bulk of the balls, providing starch, sweetness and body once cooked and mashed.
All-purpose flour
Absorbs moisture and gives the mixture enough body to hold its shape when formed into balls.
Large eggs
Bind the mash together and help set the balls as they cook.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the outside of the balls brown when fried.

The step that matters

Fry the balls in butter until golden brown. Frying over moderate heat browns the outside through the Maillard reaction while the inside heats through. Too little heat leaves them pale and greasy, and too much burns the outside before the centre sets.

Swap the parsnip

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Parsnipthe original

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