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Carrots in Butter

A simple side dish of boiled carrots tossed in butter, parsley, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Carrots in Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the carrots

  1. Scrape and slice the carrots.

  2. Boil the carrots in salted water with sugar for 10 minutes.

  3. Strain off the water.

Make the butter sauce

  1. In a small saucepan, heat the butter and stir in the parsley and a few drops of lemon juice.

  2. Toss the carrots in the butter mixture until heated through.

Finish and serve

  1. Cover and cook slowly until the carrots are soft.

  2. Serve the carrots with the butter poured over them.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Carrot + sugartop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,211 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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, once cooked, provide a tender, sweet texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, coating the carrots and carrying the flavour of the parsley.
Sugar
Adds a little sweetness that balances the savoury butter and the carrots' natural earthiness.

The step that matters

Cover and cook slowly until the carrots are soft. Gentle heat in a covered pan softens the carrot's fibres evenly without drying or scorching the butter. Cooking too fast can brown the butter or leave the centres firm.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Shallotfits about as well
  2. Carrotthe original
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Chivefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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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