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Carrots in a Mould

A baked carrot dish with cream, butter, and spices, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Carrots in a Mould

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the carrots

  1. Boil the carrots until very tender.

  2. Chop the boiled carrots.

Mix and bake

  1. In a bowl, mix the butter, cream, salt, nutmeg, and cayenne pepper.

  2. Combine the mixture with the chopped carrots.

  3. Transfer to a buttered mold and heat in the oven until thoroughly hot.

Serve

  1. Serve in a vegetable dish or on a platter, garnished with curled parsley.

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. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Carrot + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Carrots
Form the bulk of the dish and provide its main body and sweetness.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving a smooth, moist texture.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, helping the mixture bind softly.

The step that matters

Boil the carrots until very tender. Carrots that are not fully tender will stay fibrous and grainy, so the mixture will not blend or mould into a smooth texture.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, butter, nutmeg, pepper. 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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