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Puree of Carrots

A puree of carrots, turnips, celery, leeks, and onions, served with fried bread slices soaked in gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Puree of Carrots

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and rinse the carrots, turnips, celery, leeks, and onions.

Cook

  1. In a stew-pan, toss the vegetables in butter until they are about to brown.

  2. Add the sugar and pour in enough soup stock to cover the vegetables.

  3. Simmer slowly until the vegetables are fully cooked.

Finish and serve

  1. Pulp the vegetables thoroughly and sieve the mixture.

  2. Serve with fried bread slices soaked in gravy placed in the tureen.

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. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Carrots
Give the puree its sweetness, colour and body once cooked and sieved.
Turnips
Provide the bulk of the puree and a mild, slightly peppery flavour.
Onions
Add savoury depth and aroma as they soften in butter and stock.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the vegetables brown lightly at the start.

The step that matters

Pulp the vegetables thoroughly and sieve the mixture. Cooked vegetables must be broken down completely for a smooth puree. Any fibrous bits left behind will give a grainy texture, and sieving removes what pulping misses.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, celery, leek, butter, sugar, bread):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, celery, leek, butter, sugar, bread. 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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