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Ceeamed Parsnips

Creamed parsnips are boiled parsnips coated in a butter, flour, and hot cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsnip and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 669 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Ceeamed Parsnips

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the parsnips

  1. Boil, scrape, and slice the parsnips crosswise.

  2. Heat the butter in a saucepan.

  3. Add the parsnips and shake until coated and hot.

  4. Transfer the parsnips to a deep dish.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In the same saucepan, add flour to the remaining butter and thin with hot cream.

  2. Boil the sauce once, then pour over the parsnips and serve.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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

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

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 main body of the dish, with a tender, soft texture once boiled.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, coating the parsnips and helping carry flavour.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream into a smooth, cohesive sauce.
Hot cream
Thins the flour-butter mixture into a pourable sauce and adds richness and moisture.

The step that matters

Adding the hot cream to the flour and butter. Flour must be cooked briefly in the butter before liquid is added, and the cream should be hot so the mixture blends smoothly. Adding cold liquid or skipping the cooking can leave lumps and a raw flour taste.

Swap the parsnip

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, cream. 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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