Name: Boiled Parsnips
Ingredients: parsnips; lemon juice; coarse sea salt; butter; pepper

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Boiled Parsnips

Ingredients

Directions

Wash and peel the parsnips thinly.
Place the parsnips in a pan of boiling water with a little lemon juice and salt.
Boil until tender, about 30 to 40 minutes.
Serve whole or mashed with butter, pepper, 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.

Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Parsnip + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,109 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Parsnip + lemontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together172 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,227 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).