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Glazed Carrots

A simple side dish of carrots cooked with butter, stock, and sugar until tender and slightly browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 98,233 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Glazed Carrots

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash, scrape, and cut the carrots into ¼-inch slices and then into strips.

  2. Parboil the carrots in boiling salted water for 15 minutes, then drain.

Glaze and cook

  1. In an omelet pan, combine the carrots, white stock, butter, and sugar.

  2. Place the pan on the back of the stove and cook slowly, shaking the pan occasionally until the carrots are tender and slightly browned.

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. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  3. Carrot + sugartop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,211 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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 become tender and slightly sweet as they cook.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the glaze coat the carrots and encouraging gentle browning.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the carrots brown lightly as the liquid reduces.
White stock
Provides moisture that cooks the carrots and reduces into a glaze.

The step that matters

Cook slowly on the back of the stove. Slow, gentle heat lets the liquid reduce and the sugars in the carrots caramelize lightly without scorching. High heat can burn the butter and sugar before the carrots are tender.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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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