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Carrots and Turnips

A simple dish of boiled carrots or turnips simmered in stock with butter and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 98,233 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Carrots and Turnips

Ingredients

Directions

Boil

  1. Boil a saucepan of water.

  2. Add 1 tablespoon of salt to the boiling water.

  3. If using older carrots, wash, scrape, and cut them to resemble young carrots before boiling.

  4. If using young carrots, add them to the water and boil for 20 minutes.

  5. Boil for 30 to 45 minutes if using older carrots.

  6. Check tenderness with a fork; they should be tender all through.

  7. Remove the carrots and rub them clean with a cloth.

Glaze and serve

  1. Place the boiled carrots in a stewpan.

  2. Pour in enough stock to cover the carrots.

  3. Add a piece of butter the size of a nut and sprinkle with castor sugar.

  4. Boil the stewpan on the fire until reduced to a glaze over the carrots.

  5. Remove the carrots from the stewpan; they are ready to 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. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  3. 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 or turnips
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender through boiling and then glazed.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that helps the reduced stock form a glossy coating.
Castor sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the liquid reduce to a browned, sticky glaze.
Stock
Supplies savoury liquid that reduces to concentrate flavour into a glaze.

The step that matters

Reducing the stock to a glaze. If the stewpan boils too hard or too long, the liquid over-reduces and the sugar can scorch before the vegetables are coated. Watch closely and stop when the liquid turns syrupy and clings to the carrots.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter. 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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