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Risotto with Carrots

A creamy rice dish cooked with onions, fat, water, and carrot puree, seasoned with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Risotto with Carrots

Ingredients

Directions

Make the risotto

  1. In a pan, brown the minced onion in the fat.

  2. Add the rice and stir over low heat for 10 minutes.

  3. Gradually add hot water, one cup at a time, sprinkling with salt.

  4. Allow to boil nearly dry, then stir in the carrot puree.

  5. Season with pepper and nutmeg, mixing well.

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

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. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Rice + carrottop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,477 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Its starch releases gradually during stirring, creating the creamy, thick texture of the risotto.
Carrot puree
Adds moisture, sweetness and color to the dish, and is stirred in near the end.
Onion
Browning in fat builds a savory base flavor for the whole dish.
Fat
Carries the onion's flavor and helps brown it, enriching the dish.

The step that matters

Allow to boil nearly dry, then stir in the carrot puree.. Adding hot water gradually and letting it nearly evaporate lets the rice release starch slowly, which makes the texture creamy. Adding the puree only after this keeps the rice from becoming soupy or sticky.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, pepper, nutmeg, carrot):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, pepper, nutmeg, carrot. 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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