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Escalloped Parsnips

A baked dish of mashed parsnips seasoned with butter, salt, pepper, milk, topped with breadcrumbs and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Escalloped 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. Mash the boiled parsnips in a bowl.

  2. Add the butter, salt, pepper, and milk; mix well.

Bake

  1. Transfer the mixture to a buttered baking dish.

  2. Cover the top with bread crumbs and dot with butter.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until browned.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Parsnip + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,109 recipes

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

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Parsnips
Form the bulk of the dish, providing starchy body and a soft, mashable texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and helping the top brown in the oven.
Milk
Adds moisture so the mashed parsnips become spreadable and creamy.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden topping that browns during baking.

The step that matters

Baking until browned. The top needs enough oven heat to brown the crumbs and butter, which creates flavour through browning reactions. Removing the dish too early leaves the topping pale and the centre under-heated.

Swap the parsnip

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Parsnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, milk, 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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