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Drink

Parsnip Wine

A fermented beverage made from boiled parsnip pulp, sugar, and yeast, aged for at least a year.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsnip and sugar work together. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 190 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Parsnip Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the liquor

  1. Slice the parsnips and add them to the water.

  2. Boil until they become a pulp.

  3. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve.

  4. Return the liquid to the pot and add the sugar.

  5. Boil for 1 hour.

Ferment and age

  1. When tepid, add a slice of toast covered with yeast.

  2. Cover and keep in a warm place until fermentation begins.

  3. Once fermentation starts, remove the toast and transfer to a cask.

  4. Do not rack until autumn and do not bottle for at least 1 year.

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 + sugartop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together190 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Parsnips
Provide the bulk of the flavour and body once boiled to a pulp.
Loaf sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation and provides the sweetness and alcohol in the wine.
Yeast
Converts the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide during fermentation.

The step that matters

Adding the yeast-covered toast when tepid. Yeast is killed by excessive heat, so the liquid must have cooled to lukewarm before the toast is added. Adding it while still hot can stop fermentation from starting.

“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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