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Mashed Carrots

A simple dish of boiled carrots mashed with butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 ↓

Mashed Carrots

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scrape and wash the carrots.

  2. Soak them in cold water for 30 minutes.

Cook and mash

  1. Cook the carrots in boiling water until tender.

  2. Drain the carrots well.

  3. Mash them with a wooden spoon.

  4. Mix in a good amount of butter.

  5. Season with salt and pepper.

Serve

  1. Heap the mashed carrots in a vegetable dish.

  2. Serve very hot.

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

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

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

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

  3. Carrot + buttertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,083 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Carrots
Provide the main body, sweetness and bulk of the mash once cooked and mashed.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the mash a smooth texture and a rounder flavour.

The step that matters

Drain the carrots well. Excess cooking water left on the carrots dilutes the mash, making it watery and loose. Draining thoroughly before mashing keeps the texture thick and the flavour concentrated.

Swap the carrot

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper. 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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