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Fricassee of Parsnips

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

Prepare

  1. Boil parsnips in milk until soft.

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

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine broth, mace, cream, butter, flour, pepper, and salt.

Finish and serve

  1. Simmer the parsnip pieces in the white sauce until heated through.

  2. Serve warm.

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
Provide the main body and sweet, earthy flavour of the fricassee.
Milk
Cooks the parsnips to softness and forms part of the creamy liquid.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and rounded flavour in the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a white sauce as its starch swells with heat.

The step that matters

Simmering the parsnips in the white sauce. Once cream and flour are in the sauce, a hard boil can cause it to separate or turn grainy. Gentle heat keeps the sauce smooth while the flour's starch thickens it and the parsnips warm through.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against parsnip, milk, 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.

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