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Boiled Carrots

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Boiled Carrots

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Trim off the roots, wash well, and scrape off the skin. If young, do not remove the skin until cooked.

  2. If large, split or quarter them lengthwise, or cut them into two or more pieces.

  3. Soak the carrots in cold water for 30 minutes.

  4. Put them into a pot of boiling salted water to cover them completely.

  5. Boil steadily until tender.

  6. Drain or dry them in a cloth, then season with butter, pepper, and salt. Add tomato ketchup if desired.

  7. If boiled with meat, you may omit the butter.

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. Carrot + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + ketchuptop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together638 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

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

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