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Southern Carrots

A carrot dish served with a sauce made from butter, flour, chicken stock, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and carrot 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 ↓

Southern Carrots

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the carrots

  1. Clean the carrots and cook them in boiling water until tender.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and stir in the flour.

  2. Gradually add the chicken stock while stirring constantly until thickened.

  3. Remove from heat and mix in the beaten egg yolks.

  4. Season with pepper and salt, then 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.

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. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + carrottop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,029 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Chicken + carrottop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,338 recipes

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

  5. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

Flour and butter 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

Chicken stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens as the flour gelatinizes.
Flour
Thickens the butter and stock into a smooth sauce.
Egg yolks
Enrich the sauce and add body and richness when stirred in off the heat.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor and helps form the roux with the flour.

The step that matters

Mix in the egg yolks off the heat. Egg yolks begin to scramble and curdle at high heat, so removing the sauce from the heat before stirring them in keeps it smooth and creamy.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, flour, egg, 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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