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Creamed Young Carrots

A dish of young carrots cooked in butter, water, cream, and egg yolks, seasoned with salt and pepper.

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

Creamed Young Carrots

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the carrots

  1. Scald the carrots for five minutes.

  2. Rub off the skins with a rough cloth.

  3. Slice the carrots crosswise and thin.

Cook the carrots

  1. In a saucepan, heat the butter and hot water.

  2. Add salt and pepper.

  3. Add the sliced carrots.

  4. Cook gently, covered, for 30 minutes.

Finish with cream and serve

  1. In another saucepan, heat the cream and chopped parsley until boiling.

  2. Remove from heat.

  3. Pour the cream mixture over the beaten egg yolks. Stir well.

  4. Pour the cream mixture over the carrots.

  5. Cook for one minute.

  6. Serve.

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

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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, once sliced and cooked, give it its soft, tender texture.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cream mixture as they set gently with heat, giving the sauce a rich, smooth body.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, producing a smooth, silky sauce that coats the carrots.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour to the carrots while they cook gently in the saucepan.

The step that matters

Pour the cream mixture over the beaten egg yolks. Egg yolks scramble if they meet very hot liquid directly. Adding the hot cream slowly while stirring gradually warms the yolks so they thicken smoothly instead of curdling.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Potatofits about as well
  2. Spinachfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, cream, parsley, 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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