Skip to main content
Main

Stewed Carrots

A dish of carrots stewed in milk or cream, seasoned with salt, pepper, parsley, and finished with egg yolks and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
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 the carrots

  1. Scrape and wash the carrots.

  2. Scald them in boiling water, then drain and cut into long strips.

Stew and finish

  1. Stew the carrots in milk or cream with a little salt, pepper, and chopped parsley.

  2. Once cooked, remove the carrots and stir the egg yolks and sugar into the sauce.

  3. Pour the sauce 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 + 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. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Carrot + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,259 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

Carrots
Form the main body of the dish and give it its sweet, earthy flavour.
Milk or cream
Cooks down into a sauce that coats the carrots and adds richness.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they set gently with the heat, giving it body.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the savoury salt and pepper.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks to the sauce. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently but can scramble and curdle if the sauce is too hot or boiling. Remove the carrots first and stir the yolks in off the heat or over low heat so the sauce turns smooth rather than grainy.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotthe original
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Sweet potatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, pepper, parsley, egg, sugar. 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.

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes