Name: Boiled Carrots
Ingredients: Carrots; Coarse sea salt; Pepper; Butter; Flour; Minced parsley (optional); Thick cream (optional)

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 ↓

Boiled Carrots

Ingredients

Directions

Wash and scrape the carrots, cutting out any discolored spots.
Cut the carrots into thick slices.
Place the carrots in a pot with enough boiling salted water to cover them.
Boil gently until tender, then boil quickly to evaporate most of the water, leaving about 1 tablespoon.
Sprinkle with pepper and add a small piece of butter rolled in flour.
Toss gently until the juice thickens and adheres to the carrots.
Serve immediately, optionally adding minced parsley and a little thick cream mixed with flour to prevent curdling.

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.

Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,053 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,555 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, pepper, butter, flour, cream):

Parsleythe original
Nutmegfits about as well
Celeryfits less well
Marjoramfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, pepper, butter, flour, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.