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Carrots and Peas

A simple side dish of boiled carrots and peas with a butter and flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 and Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the vegetables

  1. Boil the carrots and peas together until tender.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, cook the flour and butter until bubbly.

  2. Add the soup stock or cooking water to the flour mixture.

  3. Season with salt, pepper, vinegar, and sugar to taste.

Serve

  1. Stir well 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 + peastop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,994 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

Flour and butter 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

Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavour while the flour is cooked into a roux.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce as its starch swells with heat.
Carrots
Provide the main sweet, earthy body of the dish once cooked until tender.
Peas
Add tender texture and mild sweetness to the vegetable base.

The step that matters

Cook the flour and butter until bubbly. Cooking the flour in fat for a short time forms a roux that thickens the liquid smoothly. Adding stock before this cooking can leave lumps or a raw floury taste.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, flour, butter, pepper, vinegar, sugar):

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, flour, butter, pepper, vinegar, sugar. 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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