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Carrot Relish

A sweet relish made from parboiled carrots, lemon, sugar, and almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,351 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Carrot Relish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Parboil the carrots and peel them.

  2. Put the carrots and lemons through a meat chopper.

Cook

  1. Add sugar and cook until thick.

  2. Ten minutes before removing from heat, add chopped almonds.

  3. Cook for 1 hour.

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. Carrot + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,351 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Carrot + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together416 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Carrots
Form the bulk of the relish and give it its body and soft texture.
Lemons
Add acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and thickens the relish as the mixture cooks down.
Almonds
Add a crunchy texture and nutty flavour against the soft relish.

The step that matters

Adding the almonds ten minutes before removing from heat. Added too early, the almonds soften and lose their crunch during the long cooking. Added too late, they stay raw-tasting and are not evenly distributed through the thickened relish.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Kalefits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar, almond. 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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