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Stewed Carrots

Stewed carrots simmered with parsley, sugar, salt, butter, flour, and optional beef broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Stewed Carrots

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Stewed Carrots

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scrape the carrots and split them lengthwise, then cross-split them into pieces the size of a dinner fork prong, cutting them off an inch long.

  2. Wash the carrots in cold water and place them in a stew pan with enough cold water to cover them.

Stew

  1. Boil the carrots for two hours, replenishing with boiling water if the water level gets too low.

  2. After two hours, add the parsley, sugar, and salt.

  3. Mix the butter with the flour and stir it into the carrots, then let it cook slowly for another 30 minutes.

  4. Ensure the carrots are almost dry before serving. Optionally, add a few spoonfuls of beef broth for extra flavor.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Carrot + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,606 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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, becoming tender as they cook slowly in water.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy mouthfeel to the finished carrots.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid so it clings to the carrots instead of running thin.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the earthy flavor of cooked carrots.

The step that matters

Stirring the butter and flour into the carrots. Flour added directly to hot liquid can clump, leaving lumps. Blending it with the butter first helps it disperse evenly so the sauce thickens smoothly.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Celeryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, sugar, butter, flour, beef. 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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