Skip to main content
Main

Fried Parsnips

Fried parsnips are boiled, sliced, and fried with butter, optionally coated in egg and bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Fried Parsnips

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the parsnips for 30 minutes.

  2. Cut them lengthwise and let them cool.

  3. Fry the parsnips in a little butter.

  4. Alternatively, roll them in egg and bread crumbs, then fry in butter.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Parsnip + breadtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together110 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Parsnip + buttertop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,051 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Parsnips
Become tender when boiled, then brown and crisp on the outside when fried.
Butter
Fat for frying, adding richness and helping the parsnips brown.
Egg
Binds the bread crumbs to the parsnips so the coating holds during frying.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns in the frying butter.

The step that matters

Frying the parsnips in butter. Parsnips are already cooked by boiling, so frying only needs enough heat to brown the surface. Too little heat leaves them greasy and pale, while too much can scorch the butter and bread crumbs before the coating is golden.

Swap the parsnip

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, bread. 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

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes