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Creamed Carrots

A sauce of butter, flour, and cream served over diced boiled carrots, finished with parsley.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the flour and stir to form a roux.

  3. Gradually whisk in the cream until smooth.

  4. Cook until the sauce thickens, then season with salt and pepper.

Add the carrots and serve

  1. Stir in the diced boiled carrots and simmer gently for 15 minutes.

  2. Add chopped parsley before serving.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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

Butter
Melts to form the fat base for the roux and adds richness.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter to form a roux.
Cream
Forms the body of the sauce, giving it a smooth, rich texture.
Boiled carrots
Make up the main vegetable and absorb flavor from the sauce as they simmer.

The step that matters

Gradually whisk in the cream. Adding the liquid slowly while whisking disperses the starch from the roux evenly, which prevents lumps and gives a smooth sauce.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Shallotfits about as well
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Carrotthe original

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