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Carrots Au Beurre, or Buttered Carrots

Sautéed carrots in butter with optional parsley, salt, and pepper.

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

Carrots Au Beurre, or Buttered Carrots

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the carrots

  1. Boil the carrots until tender, then slice them into ¼‑inch thick pieces, or slice them first and then boil.

  2. Drain the carrots well.

Make the buttered sauce

  1. Melt 2 to 4 ounces of butter over low heat in a saucepan.

  2. Add minced parsley, salt, and white pepper or cayenne to the butter.

Combine and serve

  1. Add the carrots to the saucepan and gently toss until they are evenly coated with the sauce, ensuring it does not boil.

  2. Rewarm cold carrots using this method.

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. Parsley + white peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Carrot + white peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together490 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. 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
Form the main body of the dish and carry the buttery sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, coating the carrots and carrying flavor.

The step that matters

Keep the sauce from boiling when tossing the carrots. Butter that boils separates, as its water evaporates and milk solids can scorch, so the sauce turns greasy and grainy instead of smoothly coating the carrots.

“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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