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Parsnip Balls

Parsnip Balls are small, fried balls made from mashed boiled parsnips, egg, bread crumbs, and fried in lard or coconut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Parsnip Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Mash the boiled parsnips.

  2. Season the mashed parsnips.

  3. Remove the mixture from heat.

  4. Add one well-beaten egg to the mixture.

  5. Let the mixture cool.

Shape and coat

  1. Shape the cooled mixture into balls about half the size of an egg.

  2. Dip each ball into beaten egg.

  3. Coat each ball with bread crumbs.

Fry

  1. Fry the balls in boiling lard or coconut until pale 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. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. Parsnip + eggtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together442 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

What each ingredient does

Boiled parsnips
Form the bulk of the balls and give them their soft, moist texture.
Egg
Binds the mashed parsnip so the balls hold their shape when fried.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp outer coating that browns during frying.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before shaping. A hot, soft mixture is sticky and falls apart when shaped. Cooling lets the egg set the mash slightly, so the balls hold their shape in the hot fat.

Swap the parsnip

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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.

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