Why it works: Parsnip and ham work together. They rank in the top 29% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyraldehyde, which smells malty, chocolate. The science ↓
Boiled Parsnips
Ingredients
Directions
Peel the parsnips and cut them into quarters.
Place the parsnips in a kettle with a piece of smoked ham.
Boil rapidly until the parsnips are tender.
Drain and serve.
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.
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Parsnip + hamtop 29% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together92 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Parsnips
- Provide the main body and sweet, earthy flavour of the dish.
- Smoked ham
- Adds smoky, savoury flavour to the cooking water that the parsnips absorb.
The step that matters
Boil rapidly until the parsnips are tender. Parsnips must cook through to become soft and evenly tender. Boiling rapidly keeps the water at a steady high temperature so the starches soften throughout the pieces, while the quartered cuts help heat reach the centre evenly.
“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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