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Boiled Parsnips

Parsnips boiled and served with butter, coarse sea salt, and black pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scrape the parsnips.

  2. Cut them into lengthwise slices if they are very large.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the parsnips for one hour until tender.

  2. Serve with drawn butter or simply season with butter, coarse sea salt, and black pepper.

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

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

  2. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. 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
Provide the main body and sweet, starchy flavour of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the cooked parsnips.

Swap the parsnip

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper. 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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