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To Dress Carrots in the German Way

A German-style carrot side dish cooked with butter, stock, flour, parsley, onion, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Isabella Beeton · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

To Dress Carrots in the German Way

7 persons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the carrots

  1. Wash and scrape the carrots, and cut them into rings about 1/4 inch thick.

  2. Put the butter into a stewpan; when it is melted, lay in the carrots with salt, nutmeg, parsley, and onion. Toss the stewpan over the fire for a few minutes, until the carrots are well saturated with the butter.

  3. Pour in the stock and simmer gently until the carrots are nearly tender.

Make the brown sauce

  1. Put a small piece of butter into another stewpan; dredge in about a tablespoonful of flour. Stir this over the fire until it turns a nice brown colour.

  2. Add the liquor that the carrots have been boiling in; let it just boil up.

Finish and serve

  1. Pour the brown sauce over the carrots in the other stewpan, and let them finish simmering until quite tender.

  2. Serve very hot.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

639Calories
15 gProtein
14 gFat
112 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 7 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Onion1 medium (110g)44
Carrot1 medium (61g)25
Nutmeg1 tsp ground (2.2g)12
Parsley1 tbsp chopped fresh (3.8g)1
Salt1 tsp (6g)0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Isabella Beeton. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 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 soften into tender pieces during simmering.
Butter
Coats the carrots and browns with the flour to give the sauce its colour and richness.
Flour
Thickens the liquor into a sauce when browned in butter.
Stock
Provides the liquid that simmers the carrots and forms the base of the sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the flour in butter. The flour must be stirred until it turns a nice brown colour before the liquor is added. Cooking it fully develops colour and a nutty flavour and removes the raw starch taste, while stirring prevents scorching and lumps.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, flour, butter, carrot, nutmeg):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, flour, butter, carrot, nutmeg. 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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