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Oarrots with Curry

A stew of young carrots in a curry-flavored cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Oarrots with Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the carrots

  1. Stew the young carrots until tender, then cut them in quarters lengthwise.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the water from the carrots, cream, butter, flour, salt, and curry powder.

  2. Simmer the mixture until it thickens.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the carrots to the sauce, cover, and let sit for a few moments.

  2. Serve hot.

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

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Carrot + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,029 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Carrot + buttertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Young carrots
Provide the main body and sweetness of the dish.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor, helping carry the curry aroma.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it simmers.
Curry powder
Gives the sauce its warm, aromatic spice flavor.

The step that matters

Simmering the sauce until it thickens. Flour only thickens when heated long enough for its starch to swell in the liquid. Stopping early leaves a thin sauce, while overcooking can make it pasty.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, butter, 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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