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To Fry Parsnips

Fried parsnip cakes made from boiled and mashed parsnips mixed with eggs, flour, and seasonings, then fried in lard.

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

To Fry Parsnips

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the parsnips until tender, then mash them well.

  2. In a bowl, beat the eggs and mix in flour, baking powder, and salt.

  3. If the parsnips are not sweet, add some sugar to the mixture.

Fry

  1. Form the mixture into cakes and fry them in hot lard 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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Parsnip + sugartop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together190 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
Provide the main body and sweetness of the cakes once mashed.
Eggs
Bind the mashed parsnips together so the cakes hold their shape.
Flour
Adds body to the mixture so it can be formed into cakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lightens the cakes as they cook.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying and browns the outside of the cakes.

The step that matters

Fry the cakes in hot lard until golden brown. If the lard is not hot enough, the cakes absorb more fat and turn greasy before the outside browns. Hot fat sets the surface quickly, helping the cakes keep their shape and develop even colour.

Swap the parsnip

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Parsnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, sugar. 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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