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Stewed Carrots

A simple stew of carrots simmered with butter, flour, parsley, sugar, and salt.

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 and split the carrots lengthwise, then cross-split them into pieces the size of a dinner fork prong and cut them into 1‑inch lengths.

  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 2 hours, replenishing with boiling water if the water level gets too low.

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

  3. Mix the butter with the flour and stir it into the carrots.

  4. Cook slowly for an additional 30 minutes until almost dry.

  5. Add a few spoonfuls of beef broth for extra flavor, if desired.

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, softening as they stew to a tender texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the finished carrots a smooth, glossy coating.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid so it clings to the carrots as it reduces.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the savory salt and rounds out the carrot flavor.

The step that matters

Stirring the butter and flour into the carrots. Flour added directly to hot liquid can clump; mixing it with butter first coats the starch grains so they disperse evenly and thicken smoothly rather than forming lumps.

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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