Name: Carrot Sauce
Ingredients: ½ pint good melted butter; 2 tablespoons mashed carrots; salt to taste; pepper to taste

Why it works: Carrot and pepper 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 ↓

Carrot Sauce

Ingredients

½ pint good melted butter
2 tablespoons mashed carrots
salt to taste
pepper to taste

Directions

Bring the melted butter to a boil.
Stir in the mashed carrots, salt, and pepper.
Cook for 10 minutes.

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.

Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,555 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Butter + carrottop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,083 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter: Provides richness and fat that carries the flavour and gives the sauce a smooth body.
Carrots: Add sweetness, colour and body as their solids thicken the butter.