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Creamed Carrots

Creamed carrots are sliced carrots cooked with butter, broth, salt, pepper, parsley, and a pinch of sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley 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 ↓

Creamed Carrots

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare and cook

  1. Scrape and wash the carrots, then cut them into ½‑inch slices.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the carrots, butter, and white broth.

  3. Season with salt, pepper, parsley, and a pinch of sugar.

  4. Mix well, cover the pan, and boil for 10 minutes.

  5. Transfer the pan to a 350°F (175°C) oven and bake for 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Turn the carrots into a vegetable dish and serve.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 as they soften.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the carrots a smooth, glossy coating.
White broth
Supplies liquid that softens the carrots during cooking and carries the seasoning.

The step that matters

Mix well, cover the pan, and boil for 10 minutes. Covering the pan traps steam so the carrots cook evenly through. Boiling too hard or uncovered can reduce the liquid too quickly, leaving the carrots dry or unevenly tender before the oven stage.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Carrotthe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits less well
  4. Potatofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, parsley, sugar. 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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