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Caromeled Carrots

A sweet dish of carrots cooked with sugar, butter, water, and flour until soft and caramelized.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Caromeled Carrots

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the carrots into thin pieces about 1 inch long.

  2. Place the carrots in a saucepan and sprinkle with sugar.

  3. Add the butter on top and pour in enough water to just cover the carrots.

Cook and finish

  1. Simmer until most of the water has boiled away and the carrots are soft.

  2. Sift flour over the carrots and stir until the water is absorbed.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Carrot + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,029 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Carrot + buttertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,083 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 main body of the dish and soften into a tender texture as they simmer.
Sugar
Sweetens the carrots and helps them brown and caramelize as the water evaporates.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor and helping the glaze coat the carrots.
Flour
Thickens the remaining liquid into a light glaze that clings to the carrots.

The step that matters

Simmering until most of the water has boiled away. If the water evaporates too fast or too slowly, the sugar either burns or fails to concentrate into a glaze. Watching the pan lets the sugar caramelize gently on the carrots as the liquid reduces.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, flour. 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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