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Carrots with Brown Sauce

A dish of boiled carrots served in a thickened brown sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,029 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Carrots with Brown Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the carrots

  1. Wash and scrape the carrots to retain flavor and color.

  2. Cut the carrots into cubes.

Cook and finish

  1. Cook the carrots in boiling water for about 20 minutes or until tender.

  2. Drain the carrots and add 1 cup of brown sauce.

  3. To thicken the sauce, mix 2 tablespoons of flour with 1 cup of liquid.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sauce + flourtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Carrot + saucetop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,509 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Carrots
Provide the main body and sweetness of the dish as they soften when cooked.
Brown sauce
Adds savory flavor and moisture that coats the carrots.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the carrots instead of running off.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce with flour. Flour must be mixed smoothly into liquid before it is added, or it clumps. Starch in the flour swells as it heats and thickens the sauce, so the mixture needs to be stirred to avoid lumps.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, 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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