Name: Parsnips with Drawn Butter Sauce
Ingredients: parsnips; salt; Drawn Butter Sauce

Why it works: Butter and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Parsnips with Drawn Butter Sauce

Ingredients

parsnips
salt
Drawn Butter Sauce

Directions

Prepare

Wash and scrape the parsnips.
Cut them into pieces two inches long and one-half inch wide.

Cook and serve

Cook in boiling salted water for five minutes or until soft.
Drain the parsnips and add them to two cups of Drawn 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.

Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together15,338 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Parsnip + saucetop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together156 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Parsnip + buttertop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,051 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-pinene (pine, resin).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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; they soften when boiled and carry the butter sauce.
Drawn butter sauce: Adds fat and richness, giving the parsnips moisture and a smooth, buttery coating.