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Creamed Parsnips

A buttery sauce with flour and cream served over boiled parsnips.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and parsnip 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. Chop the cold boiled parsnips.

  2. In a pan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  3. Add the parsnips, salt, and pepper.

  4. Stir until it boils.

  5. Remove the parsnips from the pan.

Make the sauce

  1. Add a little flour to the butter.

  2. Stir in the cream or milk.

  3. Let it boil once.

  4. Pour the sauce over the parsnips.

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. Flour + parsniptop 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. Pepper + parsniptop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,109 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 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

Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the sauce and coats the parsnips.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream or milk into a sauce.
Cream or milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and adds moisture and richness.
Cold boiled parsnips
Main vegetable that the creamy sauce is poured over.

The step that matters

Add the flour to the butter before the liquid. Flour must be cooked into the melted butter so it can thicken the liquid smoothly; adding it to the cream without this step can leave lumps and a raw flour taste.

Swap the parsnip

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

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

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