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Parsnips with Beans

A dish of boiled parsnip purée served with a ragout of French beans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsnip and beans share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 85 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Parsnips with Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the parsnips

  1. Scrape the parsnips clean and boil them in water until tender.

  2. Remove the parsnips, scrape the soft part into a saucepan.

Finish and serve

  1. Add cream and butter to the saucepan and chop well until thick.

  2. Heap the mixture in the center of a dish and surround it with a ragout of French beans.

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. Parsnip + beanstop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together85 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + beanstop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,799 recipes

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

  5. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Cream and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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
Provide the starchy, sweet base that becomes the thick purée when boiled and mashed.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, giving the mash a smoother, softer texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, improving flavor and mouthfeel of the mash.

The step that matters

Chopping the mixture until thick. Parsnips must be very soft and well mashed before cream and butter go in. Lumps left in the mash will not smooth out, and over-working cooked starch can make it gluey.

Swap the parsnip

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Parsnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, butter, egg, beans. 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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