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Carrots, with Butter Sauce

Carrots cooked in butter sauce with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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, with Butter Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the carrots into desired shapes.

  2. Boil the carrots in lightly salted water until tender, then drain.

Season and serve

  1. In a saucepan, season the carrots with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and sugar.

  2. Add a piece of butter and toss over the heat for a few minutes.

  3. Stir in four tablespoons of butter sauce and serve.

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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Carrots
Form the main body of the dish and absorb the seasoning and butter.
Butter
Adds richness and a glossy coating that carries the seasoning.
Butter sauce
Adds moisture and a rich finishing coating to the cooked carrots.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the carrots brown lightly when tossed in the pan.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

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