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Fricassee of Parsnips

A creamy parsnip fricassee made with milk, broth, cream, butter, flour, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fricassee of Parsnips

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the parsnips in milk until soft.

  2. Cut the parsnips lengthwise into 2-3 inch pieces.

  3. Simmer the parsnips in a white sauce made with broth, cream, butter, flour, and salt.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 and, once softened, provide natural sweetness.
Milk
Softens the parsnips while adding a mild, creamy flavor.
Flour
Thickens the white sauce as its starch swells when heated in the butter and liquid.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a rounded flavor, and helps form the sauce base with the flour.
Cream
Adds richness and body, giving the sauce a smooth, velvety texture.
Broth
Supplies savory flavor and liquid to the white sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer the parsnips in the white sauce. Keep the heat gentle once the cream is added. Strong boiling can make dairy separate or scorch on the bottom, and the flour needs to cook through so the sauce thickens smoothly without a raw starchy taste.

Swap the parsnip

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

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

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