Name: Boiled Parsnips
Ingredients: young parsnips or old parsnips; coarse sea salt; butter; pepper

Why it works: Parsnip and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,109 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Boiled Parsnips

Ingredients

young parsnips or old parsnips
coarse sea salt
butter
pepper

Directions

Wash the parsnips. If young, scrape them; if old, peel and soak in cold water for 30 minutes. If large, cut into 2 or 3 pieces.
Put the parsnips into a pot of boiling salted water, enough to cover them completely.
Cover and boil steadily until tender, then drain and slice lengthwise.
Season with butter, pepper, and salt, or serve with a drawn-butter sauce.
If boiled with meat, you can omit the butter and sauce.
For a different presentation, place boiled parsnips in a baking pan with baked meat, sprinkle with pepper and salt, and brown them while basting with the meat.

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.

Parsnip + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,109 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Parsnip + buttertop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,051 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-pinene (pine, resin).