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Carrots

A dish of carrots prepared as a salad or stew with salt, olive oil, vinegar, and cumin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Carrots

Why it works: Carrot and cumin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 777 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Carrots

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the carrots by washing and peeling them.

  2. Cut the carrots into desired shapes.

Make the dish

  1. For a salad, toss the carrots with coarse sea salt, olive oil, and vinegar.

  2. To stew, place the carrots in a pot with olive oil and cumin, and cook over low heat.

  3. Before serving, sprinkle with ground cumin seeds.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + cumintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together777 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Olive + cumintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,853 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Carrot + olivetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,861 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Olive + vinegartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  5. Vinegar + cumintop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together923 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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 provide natural sweetness and texture.
Olive oil
Adds fat and carries flavor, helping the carrots feel rich and coated.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the carrots in the salad version.
Cumin
Adds warm, earthy aroma to the stewed carrots.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (olive, vinegar, cumin):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Eggplantfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, vinegar, cumin. 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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