The parsnip is a vegetable I detest. Thank God the restaurants have not given it the same prominence on their menus as the equally awful carrot, which nowadays you'll find in every course from the soup to the pudding, simply because, if you ask in the right places, you can have a half a ton of the things for a few quid. Yes, I know they are good for you; I'm writing here about their taste, nothing else.
The word parsnip is from Middle English passenep, from Old French pasnaie, with the second syllable changed to nep, derived from Old English naep, turnip. (Naep is from Latin napus, the parsnip being considered a kind of turnip). At any rate, the French word is from Latin pastinaca, parsnip, a name connected with pastinare, to dig and trench the ground, from pastinum, a two-pronged digging fork. Some pedigree for such a vile vegetable.
I am by no means the first parsnip-hater, though I'd hate to be associated with the strangely modern remarks passed by some of the characters in the play Sir Thomas More, said to be in Shakespeare's handwriting, but certainly not composed by him. There is a discussion on immigrants, and one gentleman complains that "they eat more in our country than they do in their own"; and that "they bring in strange roots, which is merely to the undoing of poor prentices, for what's a sorry parsnip to a good heart"?
Another man speaks. "Trash, trash. They breed sore eyes, and 'tis enough to infect the City with the palsy." The first speaker agrees. "Nay, it has infected it with the palsy, for these bastards of dung (as you know, they grow in dung) have infected us, and it is our infection will make the City shake, which partly comes from the eating of parsnips." Shakespeare? Not that bit, at any rate.
All right, they are not bad if cooked by an expert; butter them, one of them told me the other day, and you'll notice the difference. Shakespeare's contemporary, Fletcher, refers to this culinary trick in Woman's Prize: "I shall rise again, if there be truth in eggs and buttr'd parsnips." "Faire words butter no parsnips" is to be found in a 1693 book of English and Latin proverbs by John Clarke. Sir Walter Scott, like myself a parsnip-hater, dismissed the proverb in The Legend of Montrose as "southern". Enough said.