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Stewed Carrots

Stewed carrots with butter, cream, salt, cayenne pepper, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Stewed Carrots

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 ↓

Stewed Carrots

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the carrots

  1. Divide the carrots lengthwise unless they are small, then boil until perfectly tender.

  2. Remove the carrots from the water and slice them very thin.

  3. Add the butter to the sliced carrots.

Stew and finish

  1. Stir the salt and cayenne pepper into the cream and pour it over the carrots.

  2. Let the mixture stew for 15 minutes.

  3. Transfer the carrots to a serving dish.

  4. Keep the saucepan with the cream on the stove.

  5. When the cream boils, stir in the well-beaten egg yolks.

  6. Pour the egg yolk mixture over 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.

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 + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  5. Cream + peppertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Cream and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 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 bulk of the dish, becoming tender through boiling and stewing.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, coating the carrots for a smooth mouthfeel.
Cream
Provides moisture and a silky, rich sauce that the carrots stew in.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cream into a custard-like sauce when heated gently.

The step that matters

Stir the egg yolks into the boiling cream. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat, and once the cream boils they can curdle or scramble if stirred in carelessly. Beat them well and add them steadily so the sauce stays smooth.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cream, pepper, egg. 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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