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Parsnip Fritters

A fried dish of mashed parsnips mixed with eggs, milk, flour, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Parsnip Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the parsnips

  1. Boil the parsnips in salted water for 1.5 hours or until tender.

  2. Mash the parsnips with the butter until smooth.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs and add the milk, salt, pepper, and flour; mix until smooth.

  2. Stir the egg mixture into the mashed parsnips until well combined.

Fry

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into a hot buttered frying pan.

  2. Fry until each fritter is browned on both sides.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Parsnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together669 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 fritters, providing starch, sweetness and body.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help the fritters set when fried.
Flour
Adds body to the batter so the fritters hold their shape.
Milk
Loosens the mixture and adds moisture to the fritters.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the fritters brown in the pan.

The step that matters

Frying the fritters over moderate heat. The pan must be hot enough to brown the outside quickly, but not so hot that the outside burns before the soft centre sets. Browning comes from the Maillard reaction, which needs steady heat and a dry surface.

Swap the parsnip

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Parsnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, milk, pepper, 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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