Pastinaca sativa
Parsnips are sweet, fragrant roots with a flavor between carrot, celery root, and warm spice. They are especially associated with cold-weather growing and storage.1 The plant is a Eurasian member of the carrot family whose cultivated root became an important food before the potato displaced it in much of Europe.2
Parsnip is in the carrot family, Apiaceae. The pale storage root is botanically and aromatically closer to carrot, celery, parsley, and dill than to a potato.
UMaine places parsnip among the spring-sown root crops, reflecting its long, cool growing season.2
Cold changes the ingredient as well as the crop calendar. Parsnips accumulate more starch than carrots but convert part of it to sugar in cold conditions, so roots held into winter can taste sweeter than those lifted in autumn.3 In a Northeast garden, that makes the crop unusually patient: the roots can remain in the ground into late fall or early spring, provided the soil can still be worked. If the plant starts making its flower stalk, the root’s eating quality declines.4
The root is the familiar part, but parsnip is a whole plant in the same aromatic family as parsley and dill. Its fragrance comes from volatile compounds in the root, while its dense storage tissue gives it a more substantial sweetness than a tender spring carrot. That combination is why parsnip can read as both vegetable and spice in winter food.
Footnotes
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University of Maine Cooperative Extension, “Food & Nutrition for the Home Gardener,” accessed July 17, 2026. ↩
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University of Maine Cooperative Extension, “Maine Vegetable Gardening: Keep Your Garden Growing,” accessed July 17, 2026. ↩ ↩2
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Harold McGee, On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, rev. ed. (Scribner, 2004), PDF p. 321. ↩
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University of Minnesota Extension, “Growing carrots and parsnips in home gardens,” accessed August 21, 2026. ↩