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Creamed Parsnips

A simple side dish of boiled parsnips topped with a cream or milk and flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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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

  1. Boil the parsnips until tender.

  2. In a separate pot, combine the cream or milk with the flour and stir well.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil, then pour it over the cooked 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. Parsnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together669 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  3. Parsnip + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together325 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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, giving the vegetable texture and mild sweetness.
Cream or milk
Adds moisture and richness, forming the creamy sauce that coats the parsnips.
Flour
Thickens the cream or milk as it heats, giving the sauce body so it clings to the parsnips.

The step that matters

Bring the cream and flour mixture to a boil. Flour must be heated fully to swell its starch granules and thicken the liquid. Stirring it in well before heating prevents lumps, and a smooth sauce depends on that.

Swap the parsnip

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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.

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