Scientists close to verifying parsnip-buttering hypothesis

Interim findings from a project at the University of Nottingham suggest that the traditional saying that fine words butter no parsnips could be proved correct within a matter of a few years. Research is continuing, but the growing excitement about a new breakthrough in science is palpable, with some talking of a potential Nobel Prize in the air.

‘As a child, I often heard my grandmother say that fine words butter no parsnips and it seemed self-evidently true,’ said Martin Parker, Emeritus Professor of Chemistry at the University. ‘As a scientist, however, I felt I had to prove it beyond doubt and I have made this my life’s work.’

Starting in October 2005, Parker and his team of six PhD students took 20 kg of standard parsnips grown in Lincolnshire and parboiled them. These were then divided into four sets. One control group was not treated any further, while another had 100 ml of butter applied to each parsnip with a standard spatula.

Students read extracts from War & Peace out loud to a third set over the course of a week, while another had the complete works of Shakespeare printed onto it via a standard Hewlett Packard HP 103 inkjet printer. All four samples were then subjected to double-blind tastings by a panel of 20 and analysis by X-ray crystallography.
This concluded that there was no perceptible difference between the control and the War & Peace sets, while some panel members detected an unpleasant inky taste in the printed parsnips. The buttered set, by contrast, was correctly identified by the entire panel.

Once EU funding is secured for a second phase of research, Parker’s team will work with Hewlett-Packard to develop a special nozzle to cope with the thixotropic nature of melted butter in order to print the New Testament in butter on parsnips genetically modified for suitable surface characteristics. This will report back in 2014.

The general public have been cautioned against jumping to conclusions, however. ‘Tasting is a notoriously subjective process and the results may be invalidated by the fact that one panel member disclosed too late during the trials that he fucking hates parsnips,’ said Parker.

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