Skip to main content
Main

Fricasseed Parsnips

A creamy, lightly seasoned parsnip dish cooked with milk, cream, broth, butter, mace, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Fricasseed Parsnips

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the parsnips

  1. Boil the parsnips in milk until very soft.

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

  3. Simmer the parsnips in cream and broth.

Finish the sauce

  1. Add the butter, mace, pepper, and salt.

  2. Cook until heated through 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. 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. Parsnip + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,109 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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
Main vegetable; cooking softens its starches into a tender, mildly sweet base.
Milk
Cooks the parsnips and creates a creamy, moist liquid base for the dish.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, fuller body to the sauce.
Broth
Adds savory depth and moisture to the simmering parsnips.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and with flour helps thicken the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the flour-coated butter. The flour must disperse evenly into the hot liquid so its starch thickens the sauce smoothly instead of forming lumps.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

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

You might also like

Parsnip CakesParsnip Cakes12 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes