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Parsnips a LA Francaise

Parsnips cooked with lemon juice, beaten egg, breadcrumbs, and parsley, then baked until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Parsnips a LA Francaise

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare and boil

  1. Peel and wash the parsnips, cutting large ones in half.

  2. Boil the parsnips in salted water with lemon juice until tender.

Coat and bake

  1. Drain the parsnips and brush them with beaten egg.

  2. Roll the parsnips in bread crumbs.

  3. Place in a 400°F (200°C) oven and brown quickly.

  4. Sprinkle with parsley and serve with melted butter sauce.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsnip + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together484 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Parsnip + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together172 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Parsnips
Main vegetable, becoming tender when boiled and then browning in the oven.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns in the oven.
Egg
Binds the bread crumbs to the parsnips and helps the coating brown.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the mild flavour of the parsnips.

The step that matters

Brown quickly in the oven. Parsnips are already cooked, so the oven only needs to crisp the coating and colour the surface. Leaving them too long dries the crumbs and softens the vegetable further, so the coating can burn before it turns golden.

Swap the parsnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, lemon, parsley, egg):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Parsnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, lemon, parsley, egg. 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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