Skip to main content
Main

Carrots, Pickled

Pickled carrots prepared with vinegar, peppercorns, allspice, mace, salt, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Allspice and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,021 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Carrots, Pickled

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pickle

  1. Boil the vinegar for 10-12 minutes with peppercorns, allspice, mace, salt, and sugar.

  2. Strain the mixture and let it cool.

Pickle the carrots

  1. Pour the cooled vinegar over the sliced cold boiled carrots in a glass dish.

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. Allspice + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,021 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Allspice + macetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Vinegar + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,548 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  4. Mace + carrottop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Vinegar
Provides the sour acidity that makes the carrots taste pickled and helps preserve them.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with a touch of sweetness.
Carrots
Form the main body of the dish and soak up the spiced, acidic liquid.

The step that matters

Letting the vinegar cool before pouring it over the carrots. Hot liquid would soften the carrots and cook them further, leaving them mushy rather than firm. Cooling the strained mixture keeps the slices intact while they absorb the flavour.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, allspice, sugar, carrot. 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.

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes