Skip to main content
Main

Creamed Parsnips

A boiled and creamed parsnip dish with butter, sugar, salt, cream, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsnip and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 669 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Creamed Parsnips

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash, scrape, and slice the parsnips like potatoes.

Cook

  1. Cook the parsnips in just enough boiling water to cover them.

  2. Add the butter, sugar, and salt to the pot.

  3. Stew covered until very tender, allowing the water to boil away.

Finish and serve

  1. Before serving, blend the cream or milk with the flour and add it to the pot.

  2. Cook for 5 minutes and serve in a hot dish.

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 + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together669 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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 and, once stewed until tender, a soft, creamy texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the earthy flavour of the parsnips.
Cream or rich milk
Adds fat and liquid that turn the dish creamy.
Flour
Thickens the cream so the sauce coats the parsnips.

The step that matters

Stew covered until very tender, allowing the water to boil away. Parsnips must be fully softened before the cream goes in, or they stay firm and grainy. Letting the water evaporate concentrates the flavour and leaves a thicker base for the cream sauce to cling to.

Swap the parsnip

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits about as well
  4. Parsnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, cream, 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.

You might also like

Parsnip CakesParsnip Cakes12 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes