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Baked Parsnips

A baked dish of parsnips boiled with salt pork, then baked with sugar and optional potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,668 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Baked Parsnips

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Combine salt pork and cold water in a kettle and bring the mixture to a boil.

  2. Wash, scrape, and cut the parsnips in half or quarters if large.

  3. Add the parsnips to the boiling water and boil for about 30 minutes.

Bake

  1. Remove the meat, parsnips, and gravy to a dripping pan.

  2. Sprinkle the contents with a little white sugar.

  3. If desired, add a few potatoes before baking.

  4. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 15 minutes or until light brown and water is evaporated.

Leftovers

  1. For leftovers, fry in a hot skillet with butter, ham fat, or beef drippings for breakfast.

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. Pork + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Parsnip + potatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together353 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Parsnips
Provide the main vegetable body, becoming tender after boiling and then browning in the oven.
White sugar
Sweetness that helps the surface caramelise and brown in the oven.
Salt pork
Flavours the boiling water and gravy with savoury fat and seasoning.

The step that matters

Bake until light brown and the water has evaporated. Sugar browns only when the surface is dry enough, so leftover water in the dripping pan will steam the parsnips instead of browning them. Watch the colour rather than just the clock.

Swap the potato

The recipe marks potato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, parsnip, sugar, butter):

  1. Leekfits about as well
  2. Potatothe original
  3. Sweet potatofits about as well
  4. Turnipfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, parsnip, sugar, butter. 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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