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Glazed Carrots

A dish of blanched carrots glazed with sugar, stock, butter, and salt.

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 ↓

Glazed Carrots

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Blanch the carrots and dry them well.

Glaze the carrots

  1. Place the carrots in a pan and add enough stock to cover them.

  2. Add a lump of loaf sugar and boil quickly until the stock reduces to a glaze.

  3. Stir in 1½ ounces of butter and a pinch of salt until the liquid is absorbed and the carrots are glazed.

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. 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

Small young carrots
Provide the main vegetable and sweet, tender body of the dish.
Stock
Cooks the carrots and reduces to a savory liquid that clings to them as glaze.
Loaf sugar
Caramelises as the stock reduces, adding sweetness and a glossy sheen.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, emulsifying with the reduced stock into a silky glaze.

The step that matters

Reducing the stock to a glaze. If the liquid reduces too far, the sugar and butter can scorch or separate; if not far enough, the carrots stay watery. Watch closely as the liquid thickens and coats 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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