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Carrots, Sliced and Glazed

Carrots sliced and glazed with stock, butter, salt, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and sugar 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, Sliced and Glazed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and scrape the carrots, then cut them into equal slices.

  2. Partly boil the slices in salted water, then drain.

Glaze and serve

  1. In a saucepan, combine the carrots, stock, butter, salt, and sugar.

  2. Boil quickly until the liquid reduces to a glaze.

  3. Shake the saucepan over the heat for a few minutes until the glaze adheres to the carrots.

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. Butter + sugartop 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
Form the main body of the dish and absorb the glaze as their sugars soften during cooking.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the reducing liquid turn glossy and coat the carrots.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the reducing liquid thicken into a sticky glaze.
Stock
Provides the liquid that reduces down into the savory base of the glaze.

The step that matters

Reducing the liquid to a glaze. If the liquid is not boiled down far enough, the carrots stay watery; if it is over-reduced, the sugar and butter can scorch and turn bitter. Shaking the pan keeps the glaze moving so it coats the carrots evenly.

Swap the carrot

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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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