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Fricassee of Parsnips

A creamy parsnip dish simmered in a white sauce of broth, cream, butter, flour, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

  1. Boil parsnips in milk until soft.

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

  3. Simmer parsnips in a white sauce made of broth, cream, butter, flour, 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.

  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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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
Form the main body of the dish, becoming soft and tender when boiled and simmered.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the white sauce, carrying flavor.
Flour
Thickens the white sauce so it coats the parsnips.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the white sauce, giving it a smooth texture.

The step that matters

Simmer parsnips in the white sauce. Flour must be cooked into the butter and liquid, then simmered gently. Undercooked flour leaves a raw, pasty taste, and a boil that is too hard can break the sauce or scorch the milk and cream.

Swap the parsnip

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Parsnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cream, butter, flour. 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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